My hard drive size.. i mean the REAL size.

[RathO]

I just bought a Western Digital 7200RPM 8 MB Cache
They advertise 250 GB on it, after formatting it, i end-up with 244 196 000 bytes... so 232.88 GB... hum... what am i missing here?

[Tuesday]

They say Megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes, the rest of the world says Megabyte = 1048576 bytes, i can't wait until someone busts them for mis-marketing

[setarip_old]

You are missing the same subtle distinction as is used to advertise single-sided, single-layered DVD media as 4.7GB, defined as 4 billion 700 million bytes, as opposed to the 4.37Gb based on your and my (and our computers') understanding of a Gigagbyte as 1,024x1,024x1,024 bytes or 1 billion 73 million 742 thousand bytes.

The advertising companies have simply "re-defined" a gigabyte as 1 billion bytes...

By the way, you left off yet another three zeros - s/b 244,196,000,000 ;>}

[unskinnyboy]

wow, déjà vu! It was just yesterday that I scratched my head about the exact same issue.

Picked up a Seagate 300 GB internal drive from Circuitcity, took it home, got it plugged and connected and I look in 'Disk Management' and this is what I see:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/559/harddrives7oa.jpg

wtf eh? Welcome to the world of stupid consumers and big fat unscrupulous corporations. I *thought* I had 870 GB at my disposal, but in reality I have only ~810.42 GB.

[mpucoder]

Another thing - the size of a hard drive is the unformatted size. Microsoft wastes space on hard drives (enough to hide partition and boot management programs and their data).

[Mug Funky]

i believe you can change the way windows represents KB, MB and GB if you like. there's actually an official ISO standard that represents gigs the wrong way.

true, 1000 = kilo is how it's meant to be in SI units, but in computing it's so much better to keep things to powers of 2, ie. 2^10 = 1024

[SeeMoreDigital]

What chaps my ass is, when you load an 700MB blank CD~R/RW into your PC, Windows Explorer correctly reports the free space, which is (more or less) as stated on the packaging!

When you do the same with a blank DVD~R/RW, a HDD or a removable memory card.... it never as stated on the packaging!

This is not right, very misleading and the practice should have been stopped years ago!


Cheers

[Hiro2k]

We had a good discuscion on this topic a few months ago.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=94695

[Inventive Software]

Yeah, didn't it get shut down eventually? Just mentioning it!

[mg262]

Well, at least Google gets it right:

Search: 4,700,000,000 bytes in GB

Result: 4 700 000 000 bytes = 4.3772161 gigabytes

(As I have said before, Google is also IMO the most convenient bit rate calculator!)

[Smile2]

the More GB they sell, the more GB you miss. LOL

[theReal]

posted by fcchandler in the old thread mentioned above:
Surprisingly, I recently found out that it isn't their fault. They are actually doing it right, and everyone else (especially Microsoft) has got it wrong.

According to the IEC 60027-2 standard, a gigabyte really is 1,000,000,000 bytes! A gibibyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes.

You can't blame the manufacturers for making use of an IEC standard. Why advertise lower numbers when these lower numbers are actually wrong, non-standard? Would you do that if you were a HD manufacturer?

[Neo Neko]

No conspiracy here folks. No real unethical behavior either. They are using perfectly "correct" numbers to mislead uneducated consumers.

There has been much debate over this in the last couple of decades or so. Kilo, Mega, and Giga are most comonly viewed in refference to base 10 numbering systems. After all that is what is used most outside of the computing industry. All current consumer computer technology is based on base 2 numbering systems. What does this mean? Using digits that can take values from 0-9 AKA base 10 it takes 4 digit positions to represent 1000d. Obviously. Further 0-9 being base 10, 1000 devides by 10 perfectly with no remainder. Using digits that can have 2 values 0-1 AKA base 2 it takes a minimum of ten digit positions to represent the decimal number 1000. 1111101000b = 1000d. I say minimum due to the way binary is used to represent numbers. Using the same number of binary positions where all positions are 1 will yeild the highest value representable by the positions. 1023! It's magic! No wait wasn't it supposed to be 1024? Well 1023 is 1024 depending on how you count. :D Non technical people start with 1. But scientists etc being the sticklers for detail start at 0. 0 may mean nothing damit but it still counts for something! :p 0-1023 is exactly 1024 possibilities. So in binary the space required to represent 1000 or any power of it could also be used to represent 1023 etc. Confusing isn't it?! And it only gets worse with the way some companies develop software etc. Which has lead to the innability to rightly assume that even 1 kilobyte equals 1024 bytes let alone 1000 bytes. And the difference only compounds with larger values. Leading one to pull their hair out. :p

Next debate KB vs Kb! :devil:

[Doobie]

If you walk into a store and found two drives by two different companies. One box says 279GB and the other days 300GB, which are you going to buy if the price is the same? All the hard drive companies are locked into 1K=1000. Many years ago, one company started it to inflate their drive size, now everyone has to do it. To this day, it causes a lot of confusion because to Microsoft Windows 1K=1024. Microsoft would prefer to stick to 1K=1024 because it makes their software look less bloated.

[mg262]

It's also worth noting that the discrepancy is growing worse over time... kilobytes gave about 2.5%, megabytes about 5%, gigabytes about 7.5%, etc.

[setarip_old]

@Neo Neko

Hi!

No conspiracy here folks. No real unethical behavior either. They are using perfectly "correct" numbers to mislead uneducated consumers.

Since when is intentionally misleading anyone not unethical behaviour?

And, since all drive and DVD media manufacturers are doing this, how is there no conspiracy?

[theReal]

Since when is intentionally misleading anyone not unethical behaviour?No judge in this world would agree that there is any misleading because the numbers comply with an international standard.

And, since all drive and DVD media manufacturers are doing this, how is there no conspiracy?If you were a HD manufacturer and all your competitors are using IEC compliant numbers, you'd be pretty dumb to use windows compliant numbers, would you? No conspiracy at all, just everybody using the best lawful marketing strategy.

[setarip_old]

I was, and continue to be, simply taking exception to the statement by Neo Neko" that, while "They are using perfectly 'correct' numbers to mislead uneducated consumers.", there is "No real unethical behavior"...

[Shinigami-Sama]

@ neko
I say we switch memory from KIBI/KILO to HEX
bwahahahaaaa
lets see HDD pigs shaft us with incorrect hex values :D

[Hiro2k]

Uh guys, windows isn't the only operating systems. :rolleyes:

Using 1024 is much better because it's a power of 2 and so it can be computed faster. It really has nothing to do with 1024 = bloat.

[Neo Neko]

I was, and continue to be, simply taking exception to the statement by Neo Neko" that, while "They are using perfectly 'correct' numbers to mislead uneducated consumers.", there is "No real unethical behavior"...
Lying would be unethical. They aren't lying. They just are not telling the whole truth to their advantage. (See politics) Sure they could put a warning on the box stating that the listed package capacity is in refference to base 10 numerics. That as you near the speed of light the package dimensions may varry relative to isolated observers. And that it should not be inserted analy. But the lay person probably would not likely understand any other than the last one.

Chalk it up to marketing. Because if it's unethical then all advertising is unethical on some level as are we all on a daily basis. Misleading is not necessarily lying. I could selectively quote facts to lead you to make a false assumption. I didn't lie. And you made the false assumption. So who was unethical? Was anyone? Perhaps it is what has lead to the quote "There are three kinds of lies. Lies. Damn lies. And statistics.".

[adam]

Morality aside, false advertising does not require outright lying. Providing misleading information and failing to disclose relevent information constitutes a violation of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Its not always enough to just use recognized and standardized terminology...expecially when those names and numbers have very specific and DIFFERENT real world applications. In circumstances like this a seller is usually required to include a simple disclaimer on the packaging. I don't think any HDD or optical media manufacturers do this.

There was a lawsuit filed against all of the major HDD manufacturers years ago over this matter and it was brought under the DTPA. I'm not sure when or if it will ever be resolved. I don't think a similar suit was ever filed against optical media manufacturers.

[Halcy0n]

Microsoft would prefer to stick to 1K=1024 because it makes their software look less bloated.

:rolleyes:

Yes, of course, that's exactly why they did it. I think someone needs to get a little more educated on the way computers work and stop bashing MS for no reason.

Lying would be unethical. They aren't lying. They just are not telling the whole truth to their advantage. (See politics) Sure they could put a warning on the box stating that the listed package capacity is in refference to base 10 numerics. That as you near the speed of light the package dimensions may varry relative to isolated observers. And that it should not be inserted analy. But the lay person probably would not likely understand any other than the last one.

The fact remains that they're using a standard different from what most everybody else is using.

[wmansir]

Well before hard drives even existed memory was measured in base 2. They didn't do it for marketing or to use leet computer talk, but because of the way memory addresses work. Even today RAM is sold with 1 KB/MB/GB = 1024 b/KB/MB. So logically when the tape drives/floppies/HDs came along it was assumed that 1 KB of memory should be the same regardless of whether it is in RAM, on a HD or on a punch card. Users at the time were much more aware of squeezing programs into their precious onboard RAM, so anyone playing around with the numbers (drive, media or OS maker) would have been brought to task very quickly.

[foxyshadis]

Giving the total unformatted capacity is misleading and unethical, when only a couple of standard formats exist. (2 MB floppies are the ones most of you would remember, but back in the day a 20 mb drive would format to 17 megs. (Should have been ~19.)) Doing this is just using the engineering world's confusion over base 2 and base ten powers to their advantage. They're probably helping spread it a little, instead of bumping up capacities 6% to even it out, but the long-held practice of using the same names and abbrviations for very different units is the cause.

And it's partly inertia, and partly SI's fault, since the replacement names sound so damn silly. Cute, but silly. (I picture flowers and dancing chipmunks when someone uses kibi, mibi, and gibi.)

The really hilarious part is when someone who uses them says something like "I bought an 80 GiB hard drive...."

[johnhamler1]

it is like fuel, more u pay, more the gov charge taxes!!!