Supposed to be 36TB, but after formatting it's just 30TB

I am on OS Sierra and after installing the drivers I saw the drive. I purchased a 36TB Shuttle XL drive but after formatting only 30TB was available. Any ideas what happened to the remaining 6TB?

The unit is shipped as RAID5, That means the capacity for one of the drives is taken out of the usable space to put in parity for protection.

Thank you for the answer. I have no idea what that means, but how can I get that 6TB back?

I don’t need RAID 5 and nothing was mentioned about that when I purchased it.

How do I deconstruct this Raid 5?

If you want to use the full capacity that will require you to delete the RAID5 using the Software Utility. Once you delete it you can use the wizard to create a new RAID0. This will give you the full capacity however you will not have any protection and if any drive fails the entire thing goes down and all data is lost.

just remember Advertised Capacity is different from Actual Capacity

all hdd companies advertise capacity in base 10 units but computers use base 2

36TB is actually 32TB : USB Hard Disk Real Capacity Calculator -- EndMemo

so, if you manage to get the full capacity it will only be 32TB (or 32.74TB to be exact)

Oh dang! I guess I didn’t think that equation would only mean I am losing 2TB by deconstructing the RAID 5. Thanks for the link. That’s just about 10.1% less that you get.

I guess I should just get an EV drive to expand to get more space.