Western Digital's HDDs go to 11… percent more storage thanks to new technique

spinaltap
There’s always a moment of letdown when you get that brand new 1TB drive formatted and find it’s only got 930GB available. What the hell, right? But that’s just the way it is. That data is reserved for all kinds of secret hard drive needs, the kind of thing we don’t talk about on family blogs like this one. But Western Digital appears to be taking steps to minimize that reserved space by restructuring how that meta-data is stored.

WD10EARS-layout

The diagram above should give you a general idea of how it’s done (essentially the meta-data is bunched together to reduce wasted bits), but if you want the whole technical explanation, head over to PC Perspective. Unfortunately, while most systems can handle the new drives just fine, XP can have some trouble. All you really need to do is use this utility or connect a jumper before you use the drive.