Who stole my 30GB? - My Passport Essential SE 750GB

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Just bought a “My Passport Essential SE 750GB” - dealt with all the unwanted CD mount etc. The drive arrived already formatted with a single 697GB partition. I thought I was buying a 750GB drive.

I know about the 1000MB = 1GB but on the computer 1024MB = 1GB. Do the Math - 750 = 730 or so, but I am not even getting 700. Who stole my 30 GB?

2

You must be using your drive on a Windows-based computer.  Windows enumerates the capacity of the drive in binary format such that it counts 1024 units for KiloBytes, MegaBytes, and GigaBytes.  WD built your drive to decimal format such that it has 750,000,000,000 bits.  Apple recently updated the Mac OS to read the capacity of drives in its native decimal fashion but there is no such way to interpret the drive in decimal format on a Windows-based computer at this time.

Please see article #615 on WD’s Knowledgebase for more information:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=615