Once you know decimal/binary difference for storage device labelling you just accept that's the way it is.
The confusion is more annoying when a technical reference is made to a device capacity.
eg. My BIOS can treat USB devices as "floppies" if less than 2GB and "HDD" if greater than 2GB.
Is it GB binary/technical notation or GB decimal/marketing notation?
The "Ripp off" complaint isn't an issue. Technical consistency can be annoying.
Some of the discrepancy I believe has to do with with NTFS and how it locates or places files within a sector. Techies could either confirm or rebut this
Also, hard drives come with some amount of built in "firmware" that uses a certain amount of the drive reducing the amount of space available to the user.
In addition drives that come from the manufacturer may have a a factory installed "Recovery" feature which allows the user to reinstall the system at any time just at it came from the manufacturer. This is especially true on Netbooks and the like which do not come with a built in CD/DVD drive.
Then sometimes there are programs that come pre-installed from the manufacturer that use hard drive space but whose files are hidden and locked.
I know that hard drive and defragmenting technology have advanced significantly from when I worked for hard drive manufacturers years ago, but it used to be a rule of thumb that one should not use more than 60% - 70% of the available hard drive space that was available on the hard drive at the time that the computer or hard drive was purchased. The reason for this is because it used to be that if your hard drive was too full i.e. over say 65% of original user available capacity that defragging the hard drive would slow down exponentially as your usage of the available hard drive space exceeded 65% or thereabouts.
I would think that that may have changed but I still go by this rule of thumb. Actually I don't like to use more than than 50% of original available hard drive space. Hard drives are plenty cheap today so I like to leave lots of room on my hard drives just out of habit
Finally the way that hard drives used to handle read write routines affected the speed of writing and reading a drive depending on how much of the hard drive was being used. Since hard drives use mechanical parts as opposed to SSD drives the farther that the read write heads have to travel on the drive and the more that they have to travel due to excessive fragmenting the slower your read and write speeds would be on the hard drive.
It is unbelievable how much discussion there can be about a simple mathematical conversion from decimal to binary. But it is interesting to see which theories are being forwarded - all wrong of course - LOL.
Reminds me the guy who came first time to Germany, rented a car at the airport and was wondering why he was going so slowly at 100 on the Autobahn. He did not realize that he was going 100kmh and not 100mph.
I definitely know that my entire theory was correct years ago with regard to the read/write heads movement, file placement on the hard drive and fragmented files and that parts of my theory if not all if are true today, straight up for a fact
If you would care to dispute my points one by one be my guess and lets have it.:)
That drive was completely empty.I definitely know that my entire theory was correct years ago with regard to the read/write heads movement, file placement on the hard drive and fragmented files and that parts of my theory if not all if are true today, straight up for a fact
If you would care to dispute my points one by one be my guess and lets have it.:)
It is never completely empty even after formatting.That drive was completely empty.I definitely know that my entire theory was correct years ago with regard to the read/write heads movement, file placement on the hard drive and fragmented files and that parts of my theory if not all if are true today, straight up for a fact
If you would care to dispute my points one by one be my guess and lets have it.:)
There should be a some firmware or software on a protected section of the drive that you can not see. That stuff is placed there by the hard drive manufacturer to do what it does to make the drive work. This is besides a protected section of the drive that is used to store the factory system recovery software and settings that may be placed there by the hard drive manufacturer. Even without the latter you will always have the former even if you can't see it. If it wasn't there your hard drive could not work.
20 Gigabytes worth?There should be a some firmware or software on a protected section of the drive that you can not see
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