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When does 370gb = 400gb?

B

ben johnson

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
Messages
434
I was just curious as to why a hard drive would be advertised as 400gb when it only has 370gb on it.

Isn't that against the law in some way?

It kind of pisses me off.
 
It's 4,000,000,000 bytes. There's a difference between GiB and GB, I forget which is which but what it comes down to is that the manufacturer calls 10^9 bytes a GB and your computer calls 2^30 bytes a GB.
 
Yep, the OS sees a GB as a binary gigabyte (2^30 = 1 073 741 824 bytes).

So there's about a 73 MB discrepancy between the binary gigabyte and the decimal gigabyte manufacturers use.

73.7 MB/GB * 400 GB = ~28.7 GB lost
 
ben johnson said:
Isn't that against the law in some way?
Click to expand...

The 1 point font disclaimer on the side of the retail packaging absolves the manu's of any false advertising claims for now.
 
dirtydr said:
The 1 point font disclaimer on the side of the retail packaging absolves the manu's of any false advertising claims for now.
Click to expand...

QFT

this comes up once a week,.... or more.
 
It is fraudulent, but since the general public is fairly stupid, it doesn’t catch up with them.

I’ve never seen the GiB vs GB thing. Every ad I see states GB, and then has in very fine print at the very bottom of the add:

We define a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes.

What I want to know is how is this different then having a grocery store with prices labels on every shelf. Say something costs $1.00 Then you get up to the counter and they charge you $1.24 (before tax), and have something at the register that says, we define $1 as 124 cents.
 
Empyrean said:
It is fraudulent, but since the general public is fairly stupid, it doesn’t catch up with them.

I’ve never seen the GiB vs GB thing. Every ad I see states GB, and then has in very fine print at the very bottom of the add:

We define a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes.

What I want to know is how is this different then having a grocery store with prices labels on every shelf. Say something costs $1.00 Then you get up to the counter and they charge you $1.24 (before tax), and have something at the register that says, we define $1 as 124 cents.
Click to expand...

Thats not fraud :rolleyes: If they put it on the box, and there is a method to it, then it is not fraud. Its not like they are just pulling these numbers out of their ass. Its a little shady, but you need to look up the legal definition of fraud.

Sales tax is most definately not fraud. Everyone knows that sales tax exists. Its just a fact of life. The extra that is added does not go to the store, it goes to the state.

Where the hell do you live that charges 24% sales tax. Its like 8% here.
 
TheTMan said:
Thats not fraud :rolleyes: If they put it on the box, and there is a method to it, then it is not fraud. Its not like they are just pulling these numbers out of their ass. Its a little shady, but you need to look up the legal definition of fraud.

Sales tax is most definately not fraud. Everyone knows that sales tax exists. Its just a fact of life. The extra that is added does not go to the store, it goes to the state.

Where the hell do you live that charges 24% sales tax. Its like 8% here.
Click to expand...
He said BEFORE tax. He was just making a point that GiB is what the manufacturer is actually going by, but they still put GB on the box. Then in fine print define GB in their own way.

I think its fairly obvious that the manufacturer knows that we all go by GB, not GiB. Regardless of how you look at it, it's shady and wrong.

I'd be more inclined to say if a manufacturer actually delivered the space advertised on the box they would get a reputation for that and more people would buy their hard drives, even if they cost a few bucks more.
 
dirtydr said:
The 1 point font disclaimer on the side of the retail packaging absolves the manu's of any false advertising claims for now.
Click to expand...
I bought the drive OEM. I didn't see that disclaimer on the website or anywhere on the box the hard drive came in. I realize its OEM, but thats no excuse for tricking me and not including important disclaimers.
 
I don't see a problem with it, SI notation is for Giga to be 1 billion. Just because computers can't count in base 10 isn't the fault of hard drive manufacturers. If anything, it's the operating system that's cheating you out of free space ;)
 
IanG said:
I don't see a problem with it, SI notation is for Giga to be 1 billion. Just because computers can't count in base 10 isn't the fault of hard drive manufacturers. If anything, it's the operating system that's cheating you out of free space ;)
Click to expand...

Heh, actually I don't think anyone is getting cheated.

Think about it, the computer and the manufacturers are both referring to the same number of bits of information that can be stored on the drive. They just measure it differently.

If someone says that the distance between two destinations is 1 mile and the other says its 1.6 km, is anyone lying? Is anyone being defrauded? No.
 
ben johnson said:
I bought the drive OEM. I didn't see that disclaimer on the website or anywhere on the box the hard drive came in. I realize its OEM, but thats no excuse for tricking me and not including important disclaimers.
Click to expand...

I wont disagree with you on this. As drives continue to get bigger so will the desparity between the two "Gigabytes". Playing devils advocate for a moment, you purchased a drive that was targeted towards system builders (as are most of mine) so it is a given that you already understand binary vs decimal so no disclaimer is necessary. Just a guess as to why they dont exist on oem drives.

TheTMan said:
Sales tax is most definately not fraud.
Click to expand...
No doubt many people would disagree with this! ;)
 
All we need now is for a manufacturer to put "We define 1GB as 250MB." lmao

Then start selling the first 1TB drive on the market.

It would be nice if they'd post the actual disk space instead of the decimal based number. I can understand rounding the number off a bit for marketing purposes but when you get the drives where 30gb start dissappearing it can be somewhat annoying.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
All we need now is for a manufacturer to put "We define 1GB as 250MB." lmao

Then start selling the first 1TB drive on the market.

It would be nice if they'd post the actual disk space instead of the decimal based number. I can understand rounding the number off a bit for marketing purposes but when you get the drives where 30gb start dissappearing it can be somewhat annoying.
Click to expand...

What? It is not that the manufacturers define it any strange way, they count the same way people do. It is your computer that counts screwy and says 1000 = 1024.

You could theoretically force your computer to format it's file system in base 10 but then every file would be bigger, and you would end up with the same usable space in the end anyways.

==>Lazn
 
TheTMan said:
Heh, actually I don't think anyone is getting cheated.

Think about it, the computer and the manufacturers are both referring to the same number of bits of information that can be stored on the drive. They just measure it differently.

If someone says that the distance between two destinations is 1 mile and the other says its 1.6 km, is anyone lying? Is anyone being defrauded? No.
Click to expand...

The point here is that they're not both referring to the same number of bits. While 1 mile = 1.6 km may be close enough for government work, there is a 7.3741824% difference between 2^30 and 10^9. Not exactly insignificant. However, like sales tax, it goes with the territory and should be expected when making a hard drive purchase. Unless you live in Oregon or something, you don't expect to be able to buy an advertised $99 drive with a $100 bill. It's not just hard drives either. DVD-Rs claim to hold 4.7GB when they don't, FireWire states speeds of up to 400 Mbps, when it means 400 million bits per second. Although I'm not sure, I think the main thing that actually sticks to the binary definition is memory like RAM and flash drives.
 
cambre said:
The point here is that they're not both referring to the same number of bits. While 1 mile = 1.6 km may be close enough for government work, there is a 7.3741824% difference between 2^30 and 10^9. Not exactly insignificant....
Click to expand...

The "same number of bits" refers to the TOTAL number of bits on the hard drive. Both 400 x 10^9 and 370 x 2^30 are the same number of bits.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
All we need now is for a manufacturer to put "We define 1GB as 250MB." lmao
Then start selling the first 1TB drive on the market.
It would be nice if they'd post the actual disk space instead of the decimal based number. I can understand rounding the number off a bit for marketing purposes but when you get the drives where 30gb start dissappearing it can be somewhat annoying.
Click to expand...
Doing that would be clearly deceptive, and is very different to describing their product in standard mathematical notation. Giga means 1,000,000,000 and byte means 8 bits - I think you actually want the manufacturers to describe the sizes in Gibiytes or maybe you should contact Microsoft about their operating system stealing sime of your drive space.
 
I would not be surprised at all if it was Microsoft at fault. It just seems to fit them perfectly.
 
yeah its the drive manufacturer thats correct, and the operating system thats wrong.

Giga as a prefix for SI means a billion (the 10^9 one) the hard drive manufacturer is correct about the capacity being 400giga-bytes. The OS just tells you its less because it thinks gigabytes are bigger than they actually are.
 
lol. This is an issue thats been around for just a *little* bit.

Back when it was 5MB (5x10^6) vs 5MB (5x2^20) HDDs it wasn't that big of a deal as the numerical difference wasn't that large, and while the percentage hasn't change, the numerical difference has climbed a little bit since then.
 
ben johnson said:
I would not be surprised at all if it was Microsoft at fault. It just seems to fit them perfectly.
Click to expand...

You are probably kidding, but...

Actually it was TI's fault... or you could trace it back to the first person that used mathematical logic... Why couldn't there just be 5 kinds of false and 5 kinds of true? No one did this, it is just that when you digitize things, there is inherantly two states for a circuit: energized or not, closed or open... etc etc etc. Our base-10 counting system probably came about because of how many fingers we have, haha.
 
Who wants to buy a 3TB* HD?

1TB = 10 bytes

Not fair is it? They should really market drives with what their capacaties really are. 1GB was never 1,000,000,000 bytes, and will never be 1,000,000,000 bytes. A little note or disclaimer doesn't change that, but it seems to satisfy the law

1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. End of story. (Unless that figure is incorrect. Someone check it. I did the arithmetic in my head)
 
Regardless wrong, right, stupid, or down right shady this is common knowledge. It's been done this way for decades. and the out come of the whole thing is that you did not get ripped off.

I find it funny you did not see the differnce till now. How many had drives have you had?
 
ben johnson said:
I bought the drive OEM. I didn't see that disclaimer on the website or anywhere on the box the hard drive came in. I realize its OEM, but thats no excuse for tricking me and not including important disclaimers.
Click to expand...
Since you fancy yourself an OEM, you should've read the datasheet.
 
Zardoz said:
Regardless wrong, right, stupid, or down right shady this is common knowledge. It's been done this way for decades. and the out come of the whole thing is that you did not get ripped off.

I find it funny you did not see the differnce till now. How many had drives have you had?
Click to expand...


I first realized this when I biult my first computer, a 386DX with an 85MB hard drive. It has been this way so long, that changing it would be cheating, not to mention confusing for everyone involved.
 
Wiki said:
"Marketing" capacity versus true capacity

Hard drive manufacturers often use the metric definition of the prefixes "giga" and "mega", whilst nearly all operating system utilities report capacities using binary definitions for the prefixes. This is largely for historical reasons, since when storage capacities started to exceed thousands of bytes, there were no standard binary prefixes. The IEC only standardized binary prefixes in 1999, so 210 (1024) bytes was called a kilobyte because 1024 is "close enough" to the metric prefix kilo, which is defined as 103 or 1000. This trend became habit and continued to be applied to the prefixes "mega," "giga," and even "tera." Obviously the discrepancy becomes much more noticeable in reported capacities in the multiple gigabyte range, and users will often notice that the volume capacity reported by their OS is significantly less than that advertised by the hard drive manufacturer. For example, a drive advertised as 200 GB can be expected to store close to 200 x 109, or 200 billion, bytes. This uses the proper SI definition of "giga," 109 and can be considered as an approximation of a gibibyte. Since utilities provided by the operating system probably define a gigabyte as 230, or 1073741824, bytes, the reported capacity of the drive will be closer to 186.26 GB (actually, GiB), a difference of well over 7 percent. For this very reason, many utilities that report capacity have begun to use the aforementioned IEC standard binary prefixes (e.g. KiB, MiB, GiB) since their definitions are unambiguous.

Another side point is that many people mistakenly attribute the discrepancy in reported and advertised capacities to reserved space used for file system and partition accounting information. However, for large (several GiB) filesystems, this data rarely occupies more than several MiB, and therefore cannot possibly account for the apparent "loss" of tens of GBs.
Click to expand...
There ya go, brought to ya by wiki!
 
bLaCktIGErs91 said:
There ya go, brought to ya by wiki!
Click to expand...
Too bad about all the typos. 109 should be 10^9, and 103 should be 10^3, and so on...
 
jcll2002 said:
so whats the actual capacity of a 74gig drive?
Click to expand...
a 74GB raptor I think is 73.4 Actual space, and a 36GB Raptor (which I own) is 35.3 Actual
 
jcll2002 said:
so whats the actual capacity of a 74gig drive?
Click to expand...

It depends on which one you mean. Check the spec sheet.

The Western Digital Raptor WD740GD has 145,226,112 sectors, giving 74,355,769,344 bytes of storage, which is 69.2 gigabytes.

The Hitachi Ultrastar 73LZX has 143,374,805 sectors, giving 73,407,900,160 bytes, which is 68.4 gigabytes. I think they market it as a 73 gig drive and not a 74 gig drive, tho.
 
Shameless Liar said:
Who wants to buy a 3TB* HD?

1TB = 10 bytes

Not fair is it? They should really market drives with what their capacaties really are. 1GB was never 1,000,000,000 bytes, and will never be 1,000,000,000 bytes. A little note or disclaimer doesn't change that, but it seems to satisfy the law

1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. End of story. (Unless that figure is incorrect. Someone check it. I did the arithmetic in my head)
Click to expand...

I think you might be exagerating juuuuuust a little bit. Like I said before, the OS and the manufacturers are referring to about the same number of physical bits, it is just which counting system they use.

THEY AREN'T FREAKING LYING ANY MORE THAT THE OS IS LYING TO YOU. And aside from that, chill out. Get over it. Would you rather say that it is a 200,345,687,924 byte harddrive?
 
Chilly said:
a 74GB raptor I think is 73.4 Actual space, and a 36GB Raptor (which I own) is 35.3 Actual
Click to expand...

that's funny as my 36GB drives show up as 33.9GB in My Computer,
here is an older pic of my drive list,
drive_list.jpg
 
WS6 said:
that's funny as my 36GB drives show up as 33.9GB in My Computer,
here is an older pic of my drive list,
Click to expand...
The screenshot tells us nothing of how you've got the drive partitioned.

The Raptor 36 data sheet says it has 72,303,840 sectors for 37,019,566,080 bytes which is 34.5 gigabytes.

Weren't there a couple of editions of this drive? Or was that the Raptor 74?
 
mikeblas said:
The screenshot tells us nothing of how you've got the drive partitioned.

The Raptor 36 data sheet says it has 72,303,840 sectors for 37,019,566,080 bytes which is 34.5 gigabytes.

Weren't there a couple of editions of this drive? Or was that the Raptor 74?
Click to expand...

There are 2 36gig drives, C and D, and they are each partioned to max capacity with NTFS.
does this screen show enough?
drive-management.jpg
 
36GB Raptor.
Simple partition, standard XP install formatting.
raptor.PNG
 
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