How to regain gigabytes from a external HD

I purchased the Seagate 500 gb external hard drive but when I set it up it only has 465 gb for storage - that's 35 gb gone somewhere. I assume it's the software that's utilizing the space or is it.

1. Can I regain those 35 gbs?
2. Where are those 35 gbs?
3. Do other external hard drives have this issue?

Thanks

Al

There are two types of GB's the marketing type of 1000 MB =1GB and the binary counting computer type of 1024 MB = 1 GB . Your computer counts in binary, the label is done by the marketing department. All harddrives internal and external suffer from this approx 7% difference. edit: (of course the same goes for KB to MB conversion and byte to KB conversion so it all adds up)

Methodical wrote in post #7820494
1. Can I regain those 35 gbs?

No.

They never existed in the first place. The box says "500 GB" because the drive has approximately 500*10^9 bytes of storage. Your computer says "465 GB" because the computer is counting "binary" gigabytes, where each gigabyte is 2^30 bytes.

More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.or​g …gabyte#Consumer​_confusion

Yes, all of them.

These discussions have been around for a long long long time...
hard drives have never been at their true sizes...

Cool. Well I learned something new.

Btw, SMP I like the avatar - touche turtle. AAAhh those were the days - no care in the world; nothing but cartoons and fun.

Thanks

It is kind of like when the butcher puts his thumb on the scale when selling you meat.

Methodical wrote in post #7824652
Btw, SMP I like the avatar - touche turtle. AAAhh those were the days - no care in the world; nothing but cartoons and fun.

You're only the 2nd person in these forums to make comment (that I have noticed).
I was born and raised in Quebec, Canada... Everyone there knows who that is. But once I moved to the english-speaking part of Canada, no one knew who he was. And my mom used to call me 'turtle' because of that show when I was a kid...

rklepper wrote in post #7828423
It is kind of like when the butcher puts his thumb on the scale when selling you meat.

Bunch of Shiiiisters

SMP_Homer wrote in post #7831086
You're only the 2nd person in these forums to make comment (that I have noticed).
I was born and raised in Quebec, Canada... Everyone there knows who that is. But once I moved to the english-speaking part of Canada, no one knew who he was. And my mom used to call me 'turtle' because of that show when I was a kid...

Oh I knew him well; he's the 1st one with a shell phone. I love the old cartoons. Heck my 8 yr old loves them too. I love it when she tries to explain them to me.

Later....Turtle:p