Why does formatting reduce disk space

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By Milton Kazmeyer. Deletion Formatting is essentially the same process as deleting a file on a hard drive, except you delete every file at once. Quick vs. Recovery Extraction of data from a formatted hard drive requires a utility that can examine the residual data left by the deletion process.

Why does formatting decrease storage capacity Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 6 months ago. Active 7 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 4k times. Why is the actual formatted capacity less than the unformatted capacity? Improve this question. Where did you read this? Bease until recently Apple displayed the size of a disk in Base 10 insted of Base 2 or perhaps it was the other way in either direction only recently was an option added to OS X to display either.

Windows has always used based 2. Ramhound edited. So free space on iOS devices are reported in base 10, the file system and operating system take up some of that space, and the size of the operating system isn't reported on iOS devices. EnmosProje No. On large modern hard disc this can amount to quite a difference. Secondly, formatting discs involves creating a filesystem - a way of organising the files and folders on the disc a bit like having table of contents, page numbers and indexes in a book , and this uses up some space.

On the other hand, if you enable compression on your drive you will have more space than the stated capacity, so the game can be played both ways! James Bruce You didnt lose any space, because it wasnt there in the first place. Hard drive manufacturers market drives in terms of decimal base 10 capacity.

In decimal notation, one megabyte MB is equal to 1,, bytes, one gigabyte GB is equal to 1,,, bytes, and one terabyte TB is equal to 1,,,, bytes. In the binary numbering system, one megabyte is equal to 1,, bytes, one gigabyte is equal to 1,,, bytes, and one terabyte is equal to 1,,,, bytes.

Example: A GB hard drive is approximately ,,, bytes x 1,,, A 5 TB hard drive is approximately 5,,,, bytes 5 x 1,,,, This is why Windows will show a 5 TB drive as 4. Notice that the 16 TB 16,,,, bytes hard drive's capacity is displayed in both the decimal value red circle , and binary value blue circle.