Hard Drive Size – Why Effective Size is Lower Than Actual

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I just got a new Lenovo Laptop which has been installed with Windows 7 and is supposed to have 250 GB hard disk.

Windows 7 reports that the hard disk drive has two parts: 221 GB C: and 9.76 GB Lenovo Recovery. The sum of the two parts is 230.76 GB.

If I remember correctly, if divide 250 GB by 1024 three times, I will get 232.8 GB, which should be what the OS reports as the hard drive size. But why the sum 230.76 GB of the two parts of hard drive is still smaller than 232.8 GB?

Best Answer

Because NTFS by design uses a piece of your volume for a MFT (Master File Table) which holds file names, creation dates, access permissions, and contents as metadata. The bigger the volume, the bigger the chunk NTFS will need.

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