Why does my 40gb ps3 say it only has 31gb after formatting it?

May be...

i just bought it off my cousin and it formatted like 2 times but it stays the same. i use the quick format option. wut happens if i restore it?

After a proper reformatting your 40gb PS3, you should have 37gb of space. However double check your music, video and picture files, save data and installed games to make sure that everything is gone and double check to see you have 37gb as opposed to 31gb.



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Now the reason you should have 37gb instead of 40gb is how space is calcuated. With a 40gb hard drive, you should have something above 40,000,000,000 bytes. When it comes to working out how much those 40 billion bytes are in GB, it's wrongly calculated that 1000b make up 1kb, 1000kb make up 1mb, 1000mb make up 1gb and so on.



So 40,000,000,000 bytes divided by 1,000 is:



40,000,000 kb. divided by 1000 that's:



40,000mb and divide that by 1000 and you get



40gb.



So that's how space is basically worked out.



The thing is, it's not 1000 but 1024. so 1024k is really 1kb, 1024kb is really 1mb, 1024mb is really 1gb and 1024mb is really 1gb and all of these little 24s that aren't be calculated right change everything



So 40,000,000,000 bytes divided by 1024 is:



39,062,500 kb. Divide that by 1024 and you get



38,156mb, and divide that by 1024 and you get



37gb.





It's not just with the PS3, but every type of storage device, from memory cards in cellphones or gaming cartridges, to blank discs, to pen drives, to hard drives. Everything is sized as being 1000 but it's not, so you get a difference in everything.

It takes about 5GB for system software space, off the bat. Another thing is hard drives space is more of a about thing. The system has about 40gb, it maybe running as low as 35GB. When I bought a brand new xbox 360 pro it said i had like 51.7 GB of hard drive space left.

Its a cobination of two things. One the OS has to go somewhere. And Two the HD Size actually gets rounded up ( those devious bastards!!) so sorry but that extra space you lost for good. Have fun i know i am.

I believe that the issue is that around 12% of the hard drive is taken for system updates and online play so that when you download system updates you will always have room

everything with memory is never the amount you have. Like my 160G Ipod says only 148G. This is because of already there and necesary programs that makes the system run.

some memmory will take for your operating system

you probably just sub consiously loaded all your porn on it, and then forgot