Why does my 3TB WD my book essential shows only 2.72TB on Vista?

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

HI, i recently bought WD My Book Essential 3TB and when i plug it it, it shows only 2.72TB free space? where does the 200GB gone to??! 200GB!! thats like alot… i would like to know whther the smartware takes up alot of space…

plus, theres several files inside the drive whch is preloaded when i bought it…WD stuff. can anyone help me explain why theres so much disk space lost? or if anyone having the same problem? thank you in advance.

ZG

2

It’s probably the firmware. The drives a while ago came with the annoying VCD used about 500 M or more. Also the way the convert bytes. A 1T drive is about 931G not 1000

Joe

3

thank you for your reply…  so if its the firmware, should i update it or just leave it as it is? i think the firmware should be the updated one already isnt it? since i just bought it…hw do i check whether the firmware is outdated?

your right about previous drives, even pendrives that shows 4gb doesnt always be 4gb… sometimes its 100/200MB less…the thing that got me annoyed is that my hard drive lacks almost 200GB!! thats alot. i could put in appx. 60 HD quality movies in there…haha.

4

I would not update the firmware unless you had a problem that it addressed. The updates can cause theirown problems. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it is best here.

Joe

1 Like
5

Apparently nowadays HDD is marketed using “Marketing” sizing.

3TB “Marketing” size  = 3,000,000,000,000 bytes instead of 3,298,534,883,328 bytes.

3,000,000,000,000 bytes / 1,024 = 2,929,687,500 KB

2,929,687,500 KB / 1,024 =  2,861,022 MB

2,861,022 MB / 1,024 = 2,793 GB

2,793 GB / 1,024 = 2.72 TB

I have just bought WD My Book Essential 3TB USB 3.0 WDBACW0030HBK-NESN.

Windows XP drive properties shows the capacity = 3,000,557,891,584 bytes = 2.72 TB.

Same thing happens on my “320GB” Seagate internal drive.

Windows shows 320,000,000,000 bytes / 1,024 / 1,024 / 1,024 = 298 GB instead of the expected 320GB.

6

Some of it is because of the firmware on the bridge board. Back when they used the annoying VCD it was taking 500-600 meg. I think the bridge board takes it’ space just like an integrated video card takes from ram.

Joe

7

hey, thanks for the explaination… it now makes sense… yeah i guess WD has its own marketing strategy…by displaying 3TB but actually its 2.72TB… nonetheless im stil happy with it…maybe next time il think of the ‘marketing’ sizing before buying…

ZG