Same Bytes, Different Math
A '500 GB' hard drive contains 500,000,000,000 bytes — that's the decimal definition. But operating systems count in binary, dividing by 1,024 repeatedly: 500,000,000,000 ÷ 1,024³ ≈ 465.7 GiB, which the OS displays as '465 GB'. No space is actually missing — it's just counted differently.
It Gets Worse at Larger Sizes
The percentage gap grows with size because the 1,000-vs-1,024 difference compounds. A terabyte drive shows about 931 'GB'; a petabyte would show about 909 'TB'.
How to Read It
When you see advertised capacity, expect your OS to show roughly 93% of that figure for gigabyte drives and about 91% for terabyte drives. The drive isn't defective — it's a unit-conversion display difference.