When looking to purchase a new hard drive, one of the most important factors to consider is how much usable storage space it will actually provide. Many hard drive manufacturers advertise the total capacity of their drives, such as 10TB. However, the actual usable space available to store files and data is lower than the advertised capacity due to several factors.
What is Usable Space?
The usable space on a hard drive refers to the amount of storage capacity available to the user to store files, photos, videos, applications, and other data after accounting for space taken up by the hard drive’s formatting and computer operating system files.
On the other hand, the advertised capacity refers to the maximum total amount of data the hard drive can hold. However, some of this space is used up “behind the scenes” for formatting, file tables, and preinstalled software, leaving less free space for the user’s own content.
Why Advertised Capacity Differs from Usable Space
There are several key reasons why a hard drive’s advertised capacity is higher than the actual usable space:
- File system overhead – The file system on the hard drive uses some storage capacity to organize and structure the data on the drive.
- Formatting – Hard drives need to be formatted before use, which takes up space.
- Preinstalled software – Many hard drives come with preinstalled software, utilities, and drivers that take up storage capacity.
- System recovery tools – Most hard drives dedicate some capacity for system recovery and restoration tools.
- File slack space – Due to the way data is written to hard drives, there is unusable space left between partitions and at the end of drives.
- Redundancy and error correction – Advanced format hard drives use some capacity for enhanced error checking and correction.
Due to these space requirements, the total usable space on a hard drive is 5-15% lower than the advertised capacity. Understanding the distinction between these two specifications is important when purchasing a new hard drive.
What is the Usable Space of a 10TB Hard Drive?
For a 10TB hard drive, users can expect the actual usable space to be approximately:
- 8.5 – 9.5TB for a desktop hard drive
- 8 – 9TB for a NAS (network attached storage) hard drive
The average usable space of a 10TB desktop hard drive is around 9TB. However, there are some variations depending on the manufacturer, file system, and specific drive model. NAS hard drives may have 100-500GB less usable capacity on average since they often include extra data recovery and redundancy features.
Usable Space by File System
The file system also affects usable space. Here is how much usable space a 10TB drive typically provides based on file system:
| File System | Usable Space on 10TB Drive |
|---|---|
| NTFS | 9 – 9.5TB |
| exFAT | 9.5 – 10TB |
| EXT4 | 9 – 9.5TB |
| Btrfs | 9 – 9.5TB |
| HFS+ | 9 – 9.5TB |
As the table illustrates, exFAT offers slightly more usable space than other file systems on the same 10TB drive. NTFS is common on Windows systems while EXT4, Btrfs, and HFS+ are used on Linux and macOS.
Usable Space by Hard Drive Manufacturer
Here is a comparison of usable space on 10TB drives from major hard drive manufacturers:
| Manufacturer | Usable Space on 10TB Drive |
|---|---|
| Western Digital | 9 – 9.5TB |
| Seagate | 9 – 9.5TB |
| Toshiba | 9 – 9.5TB |
| Hitachi | 9 – 9.5TB |
Most major hard drive brands offer very comparable usable space on their 10TB drives. Seagate and Western Digital are among the most popular manufacturers for consumer desktop hard drives.
Maximizing Usable Space on a Hard Drive
If you want to optimize a hard drive to get the most usable storage capacity possible, here are some tips:
- Use exFAT or NTFS file systems over FAT32 or HFS+
- Use a single partition instead of dividing the drive into multiple partitions
- Leave larger contiguous blocks of unallocated space instead of small fragments
- Manually delete unneeded manufacturer partitions and preinstalled software
- Use the drive only for data storage rather than applications or operating system files
- Regularly defragment the drive to consolidate free space
In some cases, you may be able to get 10-50GB of extra usable capacity from a 10TB hard drive through careful configuration and optimization.
Do Larger Hard Drives Have More Unusable Space?
In general, the percentage of advertised capacity that is unusable decreases slightly as hard drive sizes increase. This is because the overhead of formatting, file tables, and other functions becomes smaller relative to total capacity.
For example, a 250GB hard drive may only have 232GB of usable space, a loss of about 8% of total capacity. In contrast, a 10TB drive as discussed here only loses 5-10% of total capacity. However, the total volume of unusable space is larger on bigger hard drives.
Unusable Space Percentage by Hard Drive Capacity
| Hard Drive Size | Unusable Space Percentage |
|---|---|
| 250GB | 7-8% |
| 500GB | 6-7% |
| 1TB | 5-7% |
| 2TB | 5-6% |
| 4TB | 4-6% |
| 10TB | 3-5% |
As shown, the percentage of space lost to overhead declines as drive size increases. However, the issue of lost usable capacity remains no matter the total drive size.
Additional Factors Affecting Usable Hard Drive Space
In addition to the overhead inherent in hard drives themselves, other factors can further reduce usable space:
- Operating system – Windows, MacOS, Linux distributions all require significant storage capacity themselves.
- Applications – Usable space decreases as more and more apps are installed.
- Files and data – Photos, videos, documents, and downloads take up capacity.
- Log files – System log files, caches, and temporary files gradually eat up space.
- Fragmentation – Usable free space becomes fragmented over time as files are deleted.
Careful file management and removing unneeded apps, files, and temporary data can help regain some wasted usable hard drive space over time.
Comparing Hard Drive Usable Space to SSDs
Compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs) generally have less variance between advertised and usable capacity. SSDs still lose some space to file system overhead and formatting, but usually at lower percentages than HDDs.
A 1TB SSD may provide 931GB of usable space, compared to 930GB on a 1TB HDD – only a 1GB difference. At higher capacities however, HDDs and SSDs converge in terms of overhead percentage. Overall SSDs waste less usable space, one advantage over traditional hard drives.
Conclusion
In summary, the actual usable space on a 10TB hard drive averages around 9TB, but can range from 8.5-9.5TB depending on drive specifics. This usable capacity is lower than the advertised 10TB due to necessary formatting, file system structures, and preinstalled software. When purchasing a new high capacity hard drive, be sure to understand the difference between advertised and usable space to ensure you get sufficient available storage.