[hm2k]

[teeth_03]

because,like most storage devices,the actual amount of usable storage is never as big as advertised. Its not Windows,but the actual SSD that shows that.

Usually,the bigger the drive,the more space you lose. For instance,my 320G external Hardrive on my desktop has about 300G of usable space.

[photon]

I have the same 39MB partition on my 8GB SSD. Dell used to ship their PCs with a hidden partition containing recovery files. Maybe they still do.

[RTMini9]

From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte#C ... _confusion

Consumer confusion
Since 2001, most consumer hard drives are defined by their gigabyte-range capacities. The true capacity is usually some number above or below the class designation. Although most manufacturers of hard disks and Flash disks define 1 gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes, the computer operating systems used by most users usually calculate a gigabyte by dividing the bytes (whether it is disk capacity, file size, or system RAM) by 1,073,741,824. This distinction is a cause of confusion, as a hard disk with a manufacturer rated capacity of 400 gigabytes may have its capacity reported by the operating system as only 372 GB, depending on the type of report.

The difference between units based on SI and binary prefixes increases exponentially — in other words, an SI kilobyte is nearly 98% as much as a kibibyte, but a megabyte is under 96% as much as a mebibyte, and a gigabyte is just over 93% as much as a gibibyte. This means that a 500 GB hard disk drive would appear as "465 GB". As storage sizes get larger and higher units are used, this difference will become more pronounced.

Note that computer memory is addressed in base 2, due to its design, so memory size is always a power of two (or some closely related quantity, for instance 384 MiB = 3×227 bytes). It is thus convenient to work in binary units for RAM at the hardware level (for example, in using DIMM memory units). RAM memory size as seen by application software has no consistent bias towards power of two units, as the operating system will allocate memory in other granularities. Other computer measurements, like storage hardware size, data transfer rates, clock speeds, operations per second, etc., do not have an inherent base, and are usually presented in decimal units.

An example, take a hard drive that can store exactly 250×109 or 250 billion bytes after formatting. Generally, operating systems calculate disk and file sizes using binary numbers, so this 250 GB drive would be reported as "232.83 GB". The result is that there is a significant discrepancy between what the consumer believes they have purchased and what their operating system says they have.

Some consumers feel short-changed when they discover the difference, and claim that manufacturers of drives and data transfer devices are using the decimal measurements in an intentionally misleading way to inflate their numbers. Several legal disputes have been waged over the confusion.

To further complicate matters, flash memory chips are organized in multiples of 2, but retail flash memory products have available capacities specified by multiples of 10. Removable flash storage products contain file systems that make the devices behave like hard disks instead of RAM, yet it is called 'memory'. In operating systems like Windows Vista, flash memory can indeed be treated like RAM.

The basis of the problem is that the official definition of the SI units is not well known,[citation needed] and some legal settlements include directions for manufacturers to use clearer information, e.g. by stating a hard disk's size in both GB and GiB. However, JEDEC memory standards still use the IEEE 100 nomenclatures.

[jdizzle]

Here's what mine show. Incidentally, the two sandisk's are identically formatted 4 gbs...strange, the discrepancy.

[photon]

Originally Posted by RTMini9

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte#C ... _confusion
Consumer confusion Blah, Blah, Blah. . . . .

Does this Wikipedia article explain the space taken by the second, hidden partition shown on the first guy's post?

[RTMini9]

Originally Posted by photon

Does this Wikipedia article explain the space taken by the second, hidden partition shown on the first guy's post?

No it doesn't, but in answer to your question it is the Dell Diagnostic Partitiion that is on every pc dell ships.

Which I assumed wouldn't need to be addressed since it was already mentioned in this post.

Originally Posted by photon

I have the same 39MB partition on my 8GB SSD. Dell used to ship their PCs with a hidden partition containing recovery files. Maybe they still do.

Which you posted.

[Fanfoot]

16GB = 16,000,000,000 / (1024*1024*1024) = 14.90GB before roundoff errors, extra partitions, cylinder alignment restrictions, etc etc