Download Direct?/Missing Memory

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Is it possible to download things directly to the external hard drive, rather than just back-up things already on your computer? If so, how would I go about doing so?

Also, I’ve read that approx. 700MB of the drive storage are allocated for firmware and things of that nature. However the recent 500GB Passport Essential I purchased has only 465 GB of memory. If 700 MB are for firmware, what is the other 35GB for?

2

Answer to your Questions:

A1. Yes, it is possible to download or copy files direct to WD external drive without using the software provided.

    All you need to do is prompt the download or copy file to WD external drive as your destination.

A2. That is about right. 

       If you could go back  and right click on it to check the drive properties.

       Look at the big number right after Capacity,

       You will see something like this        500,xxx,xxxx,xxx bytes          followed by   465GB 

       That is how   500 trillion bytes  =  500GB

      

1 Like
3

That last part is confusing? How much space is actually on the drive? 500 GB, or 465 GB? If its the latter, it should be listed as such on the box.

And my Capacity is 499,404,238,848 bytes

4

Hi dfader,

Unfortunately, manufacturers use “commercial” storage capacity instead of real storage capacity. Let me try to explain this.

Technically, all data in computers is binary :

1KB = 1,024 B

1MB = 1,024 KB = 1,048,576 B

1GB = 1,024 MB = 1,048,576 KB = 1,073,741,824 B

Commercially :

1 GB = 1,000 MB = 1,000,000 KB = 1,000,000,000 B

So when a HD drive manufacturer says 500GB, they mean 500,000,000,000 B

500,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 465GB

This explains why you see 465GB. Hope I didn’t loose you there. You can’t blame WD for using “commercial” storage capacity, all other manufacturers do and they have to follow.

Ciao,

Simo