Bought New Hard Drive. Not Getting…. [SOLVED]

Hey guys,
I just recently got my Christmas money from my mom since at the time of Christmas, she did not have the money. Anyway, lets not get into that.
I took the money and decided to get me a hard drive, because I have been downloading a lot of movies, games & music and did not want to keep cluttering up my 60gig HD that I have in my laptop(I think its actually 80gig).
Anyway, I go to Staples and look at the prices. Most of the prices actually was not bad. So I paid $85.98 for a 120gig external hard drive, powered by USB. Well when I got home, I noticed that it shows 111gig instead of the full 120gig. I’m like WTF, did they jus scam me? So I go inside the HD and found there is some files, like install files for 3rd party software, so I just delete the junk and the thing still shows 111gig HD instead of the 120gig.
So my question is, did they scam me or is this normal? Are you not suppose to get the full amount of space or what? This is actually my very first HD purchase ever, and to make future purchases easier, I need to know if I am getting my money worth. Please help. Thanks.
Answer #1
Do you have service pack 2 installed?
Answer #2
This is quite normal in pretty much all hard drives. My 500gb HD when new showed 480gb.
Answer #3
Yes it is normal, it shows lower than announced I think. From my personal experience
Answer #4
Here’s the answer guys…btw the same applies to DVD disks…
http://www.diskview.com/disk-size-discrepancy.htm
Answer #5
its normal dude..
the bigger youre buying, the greater amount of spaces lost…
Answer #6
That sound about right…
when manufactures tell you the size..they work it out as:
1000MB = 1GB
Your computer works it out as:
1024MB = 1GB
Answer #7
Check what the formatted size is next time mate
Answer #8
Thank you guys so much. I now understand. Now that I know how this works, I’ll be sure to calculate accordingly on my next purchase.