hard drive sizing rort

mpcrsc562 · 27 Apr 2010

I've given up on that.

Gibibyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gigabyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I do agree that both sides--the drive manufacturers and the software developers, i.e., Microsoft, Linux Distros, ets. need to come to a common meeting place with this.

People hear "giga-" and want a billion... they could care less about "gibi-"

Or, someone can create an operating system that is base 10 instead of binary...

Pusspa · 27 Apr 2010

rsjabba said:

I don't know about you guys, but I build computers pretty frequently, and it really irritates me that consumers do not get what they pay for with regards to HDDs and their capacity.
I remember working for years to build my first PC - and the HDD was 320gb, and I was super excited. Although, on completing construction of this monster of the day, I realised the capacity of my HDD was in fact closer to 299gb, and I wondered... Why?
I made some calls and did some reading and I did not like what I found.
We all know (or should know) that computers are built on binary data (1s and 0s) that are organised into bits (single data) and bytes (8 data), and that octal's equivalent grouping of the decimal 1000 is 1024. Thats why a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes etc.
So a 2TB HDD, in theory, should be 2048GB, right? Well... no.
Manufacturers produce HDDs on a decimal scale. KB, MB, GB and TB are made and advertised, by manufacturers, as units of 1000.
Computers continue to (And will always) group bytes in units of 1024, which means the end consumer pays for what they're not getting.
As HDDs get bigger, the difference becomes more noticable.
My 2TB HDD is, in fact, showing up in windows as 1.81TB.

So my question is, why do manufacturers get to advertise for what they're not giving you? Why is a 1.81TB HDD not advertised as such, and why is nobody doing anything about it?

For what it's worth, I absolutely agree with you.

patio · 27 Apr 2010

Once i read up on it and understood the difference and saw the chart years ago i simply moved on...

dooley · 27 Apr 2010

I sure don't buy my rice by the grain, nor my bytes by the dozen, just get over it & buy a bigger drive if you need to use your drives capacity to the last dreg.

smarteyeball · 27 Apr 2010

rsjabba said:

So my question is, why do manufacturers get to advertise for what they're not giving you?

Because the ethos of advertising has always been to err on the side of exaggeration. It's gamut has always ranged from slight untruths to outright lies.

Why is a 1.81TB HDD not advertised as such,

See above.

and why is nobody doing anything about it?

Because the majority of the populous are conditioned to accept it

zzz2496 · 27 Apr 2010

dooley said:

I sure don't buy my rice by the grain, nor my bytes by the dozen, just get over it & buy a bigger drive if you need to use your drives capacity to the last dreg.

You don't buy rice by reading the label saying that it contains 8000 grains of rice, you ought it because it says it contains 5 kilograms of rice. When you weigh it at home, it should show 5 kilograms, doesn't it? If it doesn't show 5 kilograms, you are scammed.
On the other hand, hard drive manufacturers says that it's selling a 2TB drives which they meant 2.000.000.000.000 bytes, BUT computers doesn't computate that way... a 2 TB data = 2.147.483.648 bytes, the difference is quite a lot... Back to your rice analogy, what if the rice producer said that they weigh their packages by using a weighing scale that's made out of wood or something, that is using their own standard of how much a kilogram is... That would be absurd. Period. Harddisk manufacturers uses their own interpretation of how much is 2TB is, which is a lot less than what the rest of computer industry is using, it's a scam... but, what can you do?

zzz2496

rsjabba · 28 Apr 2010

i submitted an inquiry to the ACCC, just to see whether or not this would actually constitute misleading conduct. i'm still waiting to hear back - but im very sure that it will, because for a context-specific product to be provided with information that irrelevent and misleading is... well... misleading, which is what the ACCC deals with.
perhaps you guys should do the same for your consumer protection bodies.
i know that here the ACCC actually does things - like when ISPs offer 'unlimited' plans, if they're not actually unlimited, the plans get withdrawn because of ACCC action and potential sanctions.

ufp624 · 28 Apr 2010

i absolutely agree that we should all do something about this. but we are in different parts of the world. if your accc is something like you're telling us, then you're very lucky. here in our country everything is a scam. but we learn to live with it. why? because no amount of effort, especially coming from us "ordinary human beings" is going to make a difference. sorry guys, my blood pressure is rising. got to relax. hell, i still can't burn 4.4gig on a dvd5!