hard drive shortfall

[newby1]

Hi,
got a new computer recently, but it was off ebay. It's meant to have a 200gb hard-drive (the specs say 203gb) but only 190 is showing as available.
It's supposed to be brand new components but I'm wondering if maybe it's an older reformatted one ?

 

[Tha Killa]

Well usually the Windows' files takes up gigs of space already (mine took 9 gigs), and there were probably some extra programs that took some more space..

 

[mgoldb2]

read up

http://www.computerforum.com/showthread.php?t=10947

specifially the part concerning your question is

# If you are comparing the detected drive space to the number written on the box of the HDD realize that the definition of "gigabyte" on the box and reality differ. The box's definition will be 1E9 bytes while reality's definition is 2^30 (1073741824 bytes). This introduces a scaling factor of 1953125:2097152 or roughly 0.93; this means that the actual space is 93% of the advertised price

roughly 93% of 200GB makes 190GB about correct for you.