HDD's - the Advertized size vs the Actual size.

fseal · Dec 17, 2009

I called it an advertising lie. Like claiming that your product is "most powerful" when 5 competitors are all exactly the same power because the law is you can;t make it any more powerful (Asperin is a great example). I't s technically correct, they are all the "most powerful" and also the "least powerful", but is extremely misleading.

The courts decided that the CRT measurements were misleading enough to legislate it. If someone had brought this to suit the same thing would surely have happened.

[Edit] Oh heh yeah "Broadband" boy is that ever a marketing term with no proper definition (well not in the marketing world anyway) [/edit]

mcintyre94 · Dec 27, 2009

sunnybyfleet said:
The odd gigabyte here and there doesn't seem in the same league.

When shopping around recently, 500GB seems to be fairly standard for a home PC ready built and sold in a PC shop or similar today. In my opinion, anyone unaware of the computers power of 2 counting system would probably consider losing 35GB to be a fair amount. For a home user, that's Microsoft Office, a hell of a lot of documents and a hell of a lot of pictures.

They're unlikely to ever need the extra 35GB, but advertising it then not giving it is a lot to the average home user, in my opinion.

sunnybyfleet · Dec 28, 2009

So perhaps sizes should be quoted in bytes? Problem goes away then.

Or perhaps, if a hard disk is advertised at £100, we should actually pay £102.40 for it?

fseal · Dec 28, 2009

sunnybyfleet said:
So perhaps sizes should be quoted in bytes? Problem goes away then.

Or perhaps, if a hard disk is advertised at £100, we should actually pay £102.40 for it?

Hahaha, that's a great suggestion but if they want to keep the decimal gig values then if a "500 gig" drive costs $100 but is only 488 Gig in reality then we should only have to pay 97.60 for it

Would be hilarious to do if you actually bought the drives from the manufacturer directly just to make a point

Venths · Jan 23, 2010

No one has sued against the manufactures?

fseal · Jan 26, 2010

Well the HDs advertising/box art generally contains a disclaimer about "Formatted size will be smaller". THough in reality that accounts for only part of the loss. The GB/GiB issue accounts for quite a bit more.

But with that formsat warning in place it probably covers enough ass to have slipped under the legal sharks attention

valtonray · Jan 26, 2010

good post. not everyone is tech savvy enough to know this and it's not uncommon for someone to think they have been robbed of their storage space.

noobvious · Jan 26, 2010

valtonray said:
good post. not everyone is tech savvy enough to know this and it's not uncommon for someone to think they have been robbed of their storage space.

You're right....just last week my sister wanted to know what the hell I was talking about when I said our 500GB external drive wasn't really 500GB, but 465GB. She is not computer-illiterate either. I actually learned about all this last year in relation to mp3 players.....lol.

Dark Angel · Feb 1, 2010

Thank you very much, but does it go along with the external ones.

noobvious · Feb 1, 2010

Dark Angel said:
Thank you very much, but does it go along with the external ones.

Yes.

pparks1 · Feb 1, 2010

Venths said:
No one has sued against the manufactures?

The manufactures put this information on the box and in the manual. Unfortunately, most people don't understand what they are reading.

Hard drives have been this way since I started using computers more than 20 years ago. I don't see this changing anytime soon.

RawrAdam · Feb 11, 2010

All makes sence I guess, wouldn't it be false advertising though? because you're not getting what you actually paid for.

fseal · Feb 11, 2010

Technically it's not false. You are getting what they technically say you are but it is misleading. In fact there was someone that posted this very "problem" in the forums just a couple days ago.

THe stock answer was that formatting chewed up the "missing" space but of course that's only about half of it, the other half is the MB/MiB thing.

But those days are numbered. SSD manufacturers are correctly labeling their drives now and they will over the next 5 years probably completely take over the consumer market...

cclloyd9785 · Feb 19, 2010

Iv always wondered why manufacturers just make it the exact amount of bytes to make it 1.5TB or so. My 1.5 TB shows up as 1.42.

ForeverZero89 · Feb 28, 2010

its also marketing-people like to see round numbers. saying five hundred is more impressive than five twelve.

Mhjeff · May 10, 2010

Has anyone ever sued these deceptive idiot HDD manufactures?
If a gas station states that gas is 2.85 a gallon, we all expect to be buying an gallon, not 0.9313226 of a gallon.
The oil companies would lose their A$$ in court if they tried that kind of stuff, why not the HDD people?

Just my .02 cents
Matt

noobvious · May 10, 2010

Is it just me, or is this issue just

FerchogtX · Jun 3, 2010

Well, that is very usefull information here, I was aware that HDD never shown the correct value, but now I know that is decimal issues here...

IN my point of view, I think that, to avoid confution, fseal gave a good advice, I think is better that manufacturers, Windows and many other label the disks as "466 GiB Hard DIsk Device" Instead of 500 GB... looking at windows information, it actually shows the KiB size of this devices in the correct way (ignoring the GB rounded number on the right), I think is better that Windows displays 466 GiB intead of 500 GB, that is not true at all...

By now, Ubuntu is giving correct sizes on the HDD infos (sizes in GiB intead of GB) so no surprises when you buy a new HDD. When I did with muy actual 149 GiB (160 GB for the old times) I did know that 160 was not the total size, even more, 149 Gib - MFT and Boot sector, so I'm not bashing any manufacturer... is just merchandising as someone else said, but it will be better that they manage this as GiB intead of GB, will be less frustrating for evryone (like many of us in the forum) and you will actually know what you are buying.

Well... just my point of view.

See ya!!!

michaelst · Jun 15, 2010

Hey fseal...

My Kingston 128gb ssd formatted out to 119gb.
So, unlike OCZ, some ssd makers continue to advertise the size of thier drives in available bytes.

Aphelion · Jul 9, 2010

noobvious said:
Is it just me, or is this issue just

Most definitely!

10-24 & out.

Ap

HDD's - the Advertized size vs the Actual size.

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