Subscribe Via Email
How to Use Google Calculator to Find the Real Size of Your Hard Drive
So you just bought a shiny new hard drive and after you turn on your computer, you notice that your 500 GB hard drive only shows up as 465 GB… If you’re wondering what’s going on, you’re not alone.
Hard drive manufacturers say that 1000 bytes equal a kilobyte, and 1000 kilobytes equal a megabyte, and so on. However, computers think in binary terms. A computer says that 1024 bytes equal a kilobyte and 1024 kilobytes equal a megabyte and so on.
This difference in counting hard drive storage really starts to make your hard drive look a lot smaller than you thought it was. The hard drive manufacturers want to advertise their hard drives to be as big as they can, so it doesn’t look like this discrepancy in what constitutes a kilobyte, etc. will change soon.
However, you can use Google to easily find out how much hard drive space you will really have when you buy a new hard drive.
I will show you how this is done in Gigabytes first, since that is the most common unit of hard drive measurement at the current time.
All you have to do is type the following into a Google search box:
[advertised hard drive size]e9 bytes in gigabytes
So an example would be 100e9 bytes in gigabytes. This example touches me personally — when I bought a new laptop a few years ago, I purchased it with a 100 GB hard drive. When I booted it up, I noticed that it was only about 93 GB. I felt jipped. However, you can see from the screen shot below that the hard drive was holding exactly as much as it should have.
At least with the 100 GB hard drive I was only missing just under seven gigabytes. However, if you were to purchase a 750 GB hard drive, you will notice that there are over 50 gigabytes missing in action.
What if My Hard Drive is Measured in Terabytes?
In order to use this feature for hard drives that are measured in terabytes, you need to change the e9 to e12. You want it to look like the example below.
As you can see, if you buy a 1.2 TB hard drive, Windows will only show that you have a 1.09 TB hard drive.
If you thought this was bad, wait until we advance to the days where hard drives are measured in yottabytes! If hard drive makers don’t change how they measure their hard drive sizes, a 100 YB hard drive will only store just over 80% of what you think it should store!
If you’re curious, we probably won’t hit that day in a very, very long time. We still have to plow through some other units of storage. Here’s the breakdown:
- 8 Bits equal 1 Byte
- 1024 Bytes equal 1 Kilobyte - KB
- 1024 Kilobytes equal 1 Megabyte - MB
- 1024 Megabytes equal 1 Gigabyte - GB
- 1024 Gigabytes equal 1 Terabyte - TB
- 1024 Terabytes equal 1 Petabyte - PB
- 1024 Petabytes equal 1 Exabyte - EB
- 1024 Exabytes equal 1 Zettabyte - ZB
- 1024 Zettabytes equal 1 Yottabyte - YB
- 1024 Yottabytes equal… Undetermined
According to this white paper (PDF file - opens in new window) by the international data corporation, all of the hard drives in the world combined are projected to hold about 1 Zettabyte in the year 2010.
How to Use Google Calculator to Find Square Roots, Cube Roots, and Bigger Roots
Google calculator is very efficient when it comes to calculating roots of numbers. The problem is that many people do not know how to make Google to perform these kinds of mathematical operations.
How to Calculate Square Roots
The official way to make Google calculate a square root is to type the following into a Google search box.
sqrt [insert number here]
For example, if you type in sqrt 16, Google will tell you the answer.
When you type in a calculator function, such as sqrt, Google by default omits search results that match the keywords/numbers entered. If you want to see the search results, Google provides a link to search results that contain the terms sqrt 16.
Although not official, Google also allows you to find the square root of a number by asking it. Below, I simply typed in what is the square root of four? and Google returns the answer.
Another method to find the square root of a number is to just type in square root [type number here].
If you want to find a cube root of a number, just type in cube root [type number here]. The of that I put in the search box below isn’t necessary.
To find larger roots, you can just type in nth root of [type number here]. Where nth represents any ordinal number such as 5th, 22nd, or 61st.
Lastly, as you can see below. Google is capable of calculating large roots of very large numbers. It is important to note that if you are looking for accuracy, Google may not be your best option here since it only gives you nine significant figures in the answer to the query below.
How to Use Google Calculator to Convert Acres, Hectares, Square Miles and Other Units of Area
Growing up in Michigan, I enjoyed living on a scenic five acre lot. That’s a sharp contrast as to what’s available in Pittsburgh, where my wife and I currently live. We’ve been looking at houses and have noticed that the typical lot size is somewhere around 30 feet by 100 feet.
I’ve been wondering how big that yard really is, in units that I grew up with and understand - acres. Google can easily convert between these measurements. To figure it out, all I have to do is type 30 feet x 100 feet in acres into any Google search box.
Google lets me know that I am dealing with nearly .07 acres. Not very much real estate, but then again it is a city lot. In contrast, I can see how the five acres compare with the 3,000 square feet that the Pittsburgh lots allow us by typing 5 acres in square feet into a Google search box.
217,800 sq. feet blows away 3,000 sq. feet!
Google is also capable of converting many other units of area such as:
- Square Miles
- Square [kilo, centi, milli, etc.]meters
- Hectares
- Ares
As an example, we can type in two units that I am not very familiar with, the Are (different from Acre) and the Hectare.
Also, if you want to know how many acres are in a square mile, Google can easily tell you:
Lastly, I always love to push Google’s limits. I was able to find out that there are nearly 2.6 quintillion square micrometers in one square mile. This could top the list of things to do when you’re bored on a Saturday night…
As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below!
Poll: Favorite Search Engine
Loading ...