Discrepency in Hard drive information

[Jaylio]

When I right click on C: drive in my computer and select properties, I get how much used space and how much free space. However, my question is why is there a difference in the first set of numbers and the second set ??? These are the numbers I get.


Used space: 20,934,811,648 bytes 19.4GB
Free space: 61,013,311,541 bytes 56.8GB


Capacity 81,948,541,254 76.3GB


Can anyone account for these differences?? I have defragged and I am using winxp pro. I am losing over 4 gigs of free space.

 

[starwarsdad]

It is late and I am about to fall asleep, but I think it could be space used by System Restore???

 

[CQuinn]

my guess,

1st number is the amount of bytes actually being used or considered "available"

2nd number is a measure of drive capacity in use or available based on cluster size and
the number of clusters free/in use.

 

[CTho9305]

81,948,541,254/1024 = 80027872KB / 1024 = 78152 MB/1024 = ~76.3 GB. The difference is between the meanings of "gigabyte". Drive manufacturers use SI units, so 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Almost everywhere else in the computer world, a gigabyte is 2^30, or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

 

[bsobel]

Can anyone account for these differences?? I have defragged and I am using winxp pro. I am losing over 4 gigs of free space.

There is no difference, on computers a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes not 1000 megabytes. If use divde the bytes by 1024 a few times you'll see the number matches.

Bill