Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet, due on February 9th, will have a smaller amount of storage space than expected. A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.

Microsoft says users will be able to free up additional storage space by "creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition," but out of the box they'll be left with as little as 36 percent of the advertised storage available. The storage situation is similar to Microsoft's Surface RT tablet. The Windows RT operating system, that powers Surface RT, accounts for half of the 32GB disk space on the entry model. Microsoft's Surface Pro supports USB 3.0 hard drives and microSDXC cards, meaning there are ways to extend the storage.

Update: Microsoft supplied The Verge with inaccurate Surface Pro storage figures. The 128GB model has 89GB of storage free, not 83GB. We are unable to confirm the 64GB free storage at this time.

Update 2: Microsoft has now released the full break down for storage. The 64GB model has 29GB of free storage.