Q: Why do I see 1TB of storage on my hard drive label but only 930-960GB when it’s plugged to my computer? (via Quora)
A: The drive is sold by raw capacity; but must first be partitioned and formatted before use, and that process consumes some space.
An analogy: Think of an empty filing cabinet that encloses a certain volume of space (that’s the raw capacity). But to be useful, the cabinet needs hardware — drawers, sliders, hangers, folders, etc. — and this takes up some of the internal space: You give up some of the raw capacity in order to gain usefulness.
It’s the same with your drive. The label reports the raw capacity; Windows reports the net capacity after you’ve added the required data structures that will turn the drive’s raw space into something useful.
There also can be other issues with some vendors reporting drive sizes in Base2 math; while others use Base10. (E.G. a megabyte is technically 1,024 bytes, but some vendors fudge it and call it an even 1,000 bytes. Scale up to gigabytes, and there can be a big difference.) But in the questioner’s case, I think the issue is simply one of formatting/partitioning.
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