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

squonksc said:

...But still it's a rip off by the manufacturers because every thing else in the computer world is using the Kilo, Giga and Terra.

1 Gbyte of memory = 1 Gbyte of memory.

1 Gbyte of diskspace = 0.9313226 Gbyte of diskspace

So it is very convenient for them to make this exception in their favor.

If I am not mistaken, many HDDs actually have more capacity on the platters than is actually used. I do not know the technology, but I do recall reading something akin to that while I was researching BER and RAID5.

They are getting away with something there that's for sure.

Monitor companies were similarly taken to task over tube sizes back in the day (Max tube diagonal reported vs actual screen size assumed). It would be nice if you could buy a "500 gig" drive and actually see "500 gigs" on your computer! :)

Aha! I was always wondering why I only had 465GB instead of the 500GB.

Thanks for the detailed explanation! +Rep.

C'mon guys, no one is 'getting away' with anything. Computers just represent numbers differently than we do. It 'counts' in binary.

1 Kilobyte = 2^10 = 1024 decimal
1 Megabyte = 2^20 = 1048576 decimal
1 Gigabyte = 2^30 = 1073741824 decimal.

A '500 GIG drive' has 500 billion locations. Count them. Divide it by 2^30 and you get 465.66. It's still 500 billion. You aren't losing storage locations.

If it still bothers you...at least you're getting over on the RAM people. I just bought 12 GB of RAM from OCZ...well they said it was 12 GB...but I'll be damned if my system didn't say I had 12,884,901,888 of RAM. Almost a whole extra GB for FREE!

Just the way it is.

So thats why my so called 750gb reads 698gb.

That must be one of the worst buys ever.

Thanks for the advise

Tip o the scales for you

It gets better HD's can have up to 10% bad sectors.

Zidane24 said:

Hexmaniac said:

C'mon guys, no one is 'getting away' with anything. Computers just represent numbers differently than we do. It 'counts' in binary.

1 Kilobyte = 2^10 = 1024 decimal
1 Megabyte = 2^20 = 1048576 decimal
1 Gigabyte = 2^30 = 1073741824 decimal.

A '500 GIG drive' has 500 billion locations. Count them. Divide it by 2^30 and you get 465.66. It's still 500 billion. You aren't losing storage locations.

If it still bothers you...at least you're getting over on the RAM people. I just bought 12 GB of RAM from OCZ...well they said it was 12 GB...but I'll be damned if my system didn't say I had 12,884,901,888 of RAM. Almost a whole extra GB for FREE!

Just the way it is.

Re-read the thread...your missing the point, a vaild one at that

Actually, I was addressing the two posts directly above mine, not the content of the thread. I am just stating that the prefix of giga- represents 10^9 (1,000,000,000), in which case drive manufacturers are correct in identifying their drive's capacity. A PC represents giga- as 2^30. There is no numerical difference. That's all...

The manufacturers are correct but it is still misleading. If you polled 100 normal computer users, only a small handful would know why their 500gig drive they bought only shows 486 gig on their computer.

It's an "advertising lie" and it's the best kind, its "technically correct" but it /is/ misleading and confusing. NOONE uses the base 10 representation of a "Gig" on a computer, and that is where the drive size is reported.

You bring up memory, that's a great example. Why is storage in ram reported differently from stoarge on permament media. They are both storage, both storing the same thing and both addressed and size reported in base 2 representaions of a "Gigabyte" (Yes technically a Gibibyte)). Yet for some confusing and inexplicable reason they use two different representations of the word "Gigabyte".

Luckystar said:

So thats why my so called 750gb reads 698gb.

That must be one of the worst buys ever.

Thanks for the advise

Tip o the scales for you

I guess this guy tipped someone else's scale, because I didn't get it.

What am I going to tell my postpimp?