The result of marketing pushing base 10 numbers on an archiecture that is base 2. Fundamentally is caused by the difference of 10³ (1000) vs 2¹⁰ (1024).
Actual storage size of what you will buy is Amount = initial size * (1000/1024)^n where n is the power of 10^n for the magnitude (e.g kilo = 3, mega = 6, giga = 9, tera = 12)
I know this a a joke but in case some people are actually curious: The manufacturer gives the capacity in Terabytes (= 1 Trillion Bytes) and the operating system probably shows it in Tebibytes (1024^4 Bytes ≈ 1.1 Trillion Bytes). So 2 Terabytes are two trillion bytes which is approximately 1.82 Tebibytes
Imagine buying 14TB and find out that it is 12TB instead.
I’ve always known the advertised space is larger than the actual space, but it was never quite the shock as it was when I recently bought an 18TB external drive with ~16 TB usable.
18 “TB” with ~16 TiB usable 😞 they scammed us so hard they renamed TB and GB
Instead of that we should protest against si k should be K
- B
- kB < — Imposter
- MB
- GB
- TB
- PB
(Since this is SI it’s powers of 10^3 not 2^10 when going one level up)
Big K is Kelvins (temperature), so the multiplier had to be little k
How unfortunate However, KiB
The issue is in your software that displays the capacity (most likely windows).
You bought 2 TB SSD. You got 2 TB SSD. This is equivalent to 1.8 TiB (think of it like yards and meter). Windows shows you the capacity in TiB, but writes TB next to it.
Say you buy a 2.18 yard stick. You get a 2.2 yard stick, which is equivalent to 2 meter. Windows will tell you it’s 2 yards long. Why? I don’t know.
