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.
All makes sence I guess, wouldn't it be false advertising though? because you're not getting what you actually paid for.
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...
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.
its also marketing-people like to see round numbers. saying five hundred is more impressive than five twelve.
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
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!!!
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.
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