Time for Hard Drive Manufacturers to Cut the GB BS

118 Comments on Time for Hard Drive Manufacturers to Cut the GB BS

Ethan on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 12:10 am


I completely agree. I’ve had multiple conversations about this recently with friends and family members, and the consensus is that whichever way they decide to do it (actually sell us a 500GB formatted drive, or advertise the formatted capacity), the box should show the actual usable-after-formatted amount of space on the drive. I personally would prefer that they sell round-numbered capacities (500 formatted GB), and raise the prices a bit.

If a big brand begins to advertise drives by the real-life space, rather than the misleading 10-base counting, I will be a lot more likely to purchase their drives than another brand’s.

Dan Knight on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:17 am


Um, this problem goes back long before 20 GB drives - we were experiencing it in the day of 20 MB and 40 MB drives.

On hard drives, there is no difference between preformatted and formatted capacity - that’s a distinction from the floppy drive era.

While I agree that drives should be rated in computer (binary) gigabytes, the difference is a very consistent 7-8% between advertised (digital) capacity and reported binary capacity. It’s no worse on a 700 GB drive than a 3 GB one.

Dr. Macenstein on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:24 am


Dan,

I was not trying to say that the problem is worse for larger drives. My point is just that 7% of a 1TB drive adds up to an insane amount of storage that you THINK you are buying, but in reality are not.

But everything is relative. 10 years ago 3GB of “missing” space would have seemed like the 90GB missing today.

-The Doc

Dave M. on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 12:58 pm


Why can’t HDD manufacturers simply make a drive that, after formatting, shows 500GB’s. If that means the drive is really 565GB’s unformatted, who cares. I think people like round numbers.

Look at sale prices. Yes, we have this sparkling new computer, all for just $4,999.99! Do they really think they are fooling people still? $5,000 is $5,000. Taking away a penny isn’t going to make it $4,000 magically. HDD makers are pretty much doing the opposite by quoting the base 10 value of bytes instead of the base 2 value.

I’ve always feel “jipped” when format a 500GB drive only to see 465GB. I want that 35GB! That’s quite a lot of music, or even movies.

Shane on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 1:03 pm


Lame, find a different topic someone who’s not a lamer will care about

Matt on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 2:32 pm


This issue bugs me quite a lot. The industry’s attempt to simplify things has just made things more complicated in the long run.

Dan Knight said: “the difference is a very consistent 7-8% between advertised (digital) capacity and reported binary capacity. It’s no worse on a 700 GB drive than a 3 GB one.”

While this amongst hard drives rated in GB, it doesn’t hold true for older hard drives rated in MB, or in newer drives rated in TB.

1MB=1,048,576B vs. 10^6 means a 4.6% difference
1GB=1,073,741,824B vs. 10^9 means a 7% difference
1TB=1,099,511,627,776 vs. 10^12 means a 9% difference
…and when we hit petabytes, then the difference grows to 11.2%

Why can’t the industry just tell us what we’re actually buying?

Ethan on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 4:52 pm


Matt, that’s really interesting - so the problem does really become more serious as our drives grow. Specifically, as we jump from MB > GB > TB > PB.

Steve on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 5:21 pm


While you are at it, get rid of the 9/10th cent on gasoline prices. Might have mattered at 12cents a gallon, but not when you pay $3.50/gal.

Of course, that hasn’t happened. It is just part of the industry. And as each manufacturer doesn’t want to be outdone, you would have to have 100% participation. ’cause Seagate isn’t going to start advertising 465GB drives when Maxtor is selling 500GB drives.

Like the extinction of the 9/10th cent, I don’t think this will ever happen. But I would welcome it if it did.

Hindsight on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 5:49 pm


When I first read posts complaining about this on 1TB drives I snorted in disgust. My thoughts have changed since then and I agree, it’s time something was done about this. In the past 3 months I’ve filled up 2 1TB arrays and have more to come as I do video for a living. HD’s are cheap enough to be an economical way to archive and this holdover from days past should just be dealt with by quite easily upping the capacity a few more GB and selling them at rounded numbers. no BIG deal, but worth doing.

Justin D. Morgan on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 7:49 pm


Hard Drive manufacturers do not use binary math (2^x) to describe the size of hard drives, but rather they use decimal math (10^x). [If they used binary math to size a hard drive, we wonldn't have this problem.] Please understand that I offer this only as gentle correction.

I do totally agree that it is time that hard drive manufacturers use the same binary system as the rest of the computer industry. I wouldn’t mind if they rated the drive size as the capacity of the drive before the filesystem (FAT/NTFS/HFS+) was applied — that would still be honest.

How is it that hard drive manufacturers can get away with using what amounts to the wrong measurement standard? If my local grocery store started using a different standard for their scales, the local government would be on them in no time. Why has [almost] nobody done anything yet?

Count Macula on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 10:27 pm


I love it when Macenstein breaches the great computing divide like this. My son was expressing the very same outrage over the capacity listing of his 360 Hard Drive the other day.

arnold on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 10:34 pm


This is an age old problem. It would be nice if they could finally get around to making a bit more cut and dry.

http://streetjesus.blogspot.com

subcorpus on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 10:39 pm


i agree …
and someone should do something about those internet connections as well …
i have a 512 … and i’ve never got anything close to it like ever …

soju on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 10:43 pm


The iPod is a perfect example of this. When I had a 20 GB iPod, I actually had only 18.something and the 30GB follows the same pattern. Why not just post what is actually free, not the sum total before other programs are installed. Agree with this post 100%. Stop the bullshit.

Gareth on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 10:57 pm


-I guess you could say I know a little about the hard drive business because that’s where I’m interning.-

Something that should be noted is the fact that the people who make these claims are the chiefs/vps of the companies and the marketing/sales teams. In the servo-mechanical department, as the aerial densities of the media rapidly decrease you better believe those drive capacities are on everyone’s mind, but for different reasons.

It’s easy to understand your frustration, but you probably don’t face the larger hard drive problems that the majority of users complain about. Power consumption, rugged durability, acoustics, drive speed, as well as drive capacity are the driving factors for demand, and when big time companies like Dell, HP, IBM, etc. want the business of hard drives (not to mention enterprise storage like Nearline), you can bet your hard earned dollar they care about delivering reliability over the actual literal drive capacity.

I like Dave M.’s idea and I’ve often wondered this myself. It’s kind of the same question as “why don’t marketplaces adjust their prices so that when you add tax it comes out evenly?” The same answer to that applies here. The “tax” changes over time (partition methods, file system optimization, compression & encryption to name a few) and that’s something you cannot escape with these rounded numbers.

Good conversation thus far…

Matt on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 10:57 pm


I think there are two solutions, one which you stated:

1)Put the actual formatted capacity on the box
2)If the manufacturers still want to keep even numbers, like 500gb, make sure that number is the formatted capacity

snowbum on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:00 pm


automakers do this as well… mpg… *unless you draft behind an 18 wheeler with everything but the engine off on a downhill slope*

Unroyal on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:02 pm


This annoys me too. i don’t know if i am repeating someone, but it’s not about rounding KB, MB or GB, and it’s not simplifying things, and there is no unformated and formated size, it’s just beneficial for manufacturers to use decimal system instead of binary when describing how much bytes the hard drive holds because it looks bigger than it is, for example when you are buying 500GB disk, actually you are buying 500′000′000 (which is 500 G in decimal, but bytes are not decimal) bytes hard drive, which is 476,8… GB, the correct byte size that would make 500 GB should have been 524′288′000

Steve on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:07 pm


Funny story.

I actually bought a carton of eggs recently. I saw the dozen carton sitting on the shelf and thought to myself, “Steve, you have to buy those eggs.” To my horror, the carton only had 12 eggs in it. Being a baker, this is unacceptable. A dozen to me is 13, not 12. I demand anything I buy, in a dozen count, contain 13 items. I mean, it’s only fair. Right?

Who’s with me?!

jason on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:07 pm


the problem isnt the HDD manufactures, its your ignorance. There is a difference between a GB and a GiB. Look it up on wikipedia for a full explanation, I’m not your professor. In short, 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes, where 1 GiB is 1,073,741,824. The box is in GB, your computer tells it to you in GiB. There is a flat 98% difference between the two, so obviously, the bigger the hdd, the bigger the difference from GB to GiB.

chulo on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:07 pm


so you complain about 5 gigs when you run an operating system thats 25 gigs because it has every print driver under the sun…..hmmm hard drives are cheap who cares

ryan on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:09 pm


The fact of the matter is, the hard drive manufacturers are absolutely correct in the units they use. They’re following the SI prefix, which is base 10. 10^3 - kilo, 10^6 - mega, 10^9, giga etc. For a long time there was a word of mouth saying that if on computers the SI prefix had a double meaning.. That it was 2^10 - kilo, 2^20 - mega, 2^30 - giga etc. Whenever you give a unit a double meaning you run into problems, so a new standard was created by the IEC.

This works on binary, so 2^10 - kibi, 2^20 - mebi, 2^30 - gibi. The issue is still around because many operating systems have not changed over to this new standard, as they bloody well should have. They’re calculating binary prefixes but using the SI symbols to represent the IEC values.

If hdd manufacturers posted both, then sure.. 300GB and 279GiB respectively. They can post one or the other, but they have to use the correct symbols associated with the correct standard.

You can take a look on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix for more information. If you want to complain to anyone, complain to the operating systems for using the wrong symbols for the type of measurement they’re doing. It’s completely their fault.

Sean on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:10 pm


Giga means 1 billion. 10 gigabytes means 1 billion bytes. You’re confusing it with “Gibi”

In other words, harddrive manufacturers are correct, you and your operating system are wrong.

David on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:12 pm


It’s hardly misleading advertising- it’s consistent across the industry and completely predictable; given the manufacturer’s listed size you can calculate fairly accurately the “actual” size you’ll see.

You not wanting to bother to do the math if it concerns you that much isn’t really sufficient reason by itself.

David on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:13 pm


This is because HD manufacturers say 1 KB = 1000 B, 1 MB = 1000 KB, 1 GB = 1000 MB, and 1 TB = 1000 GB. The conversion factors are really 1024. A 500 GB hard drive is actually 500,000,000,000 B, but it should really be 536,870,923,000 B, so you always lose 6.87% (on drives quoted in GB, less in MB, more in TB).

Andrew on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:14 pm


All it would take is one company to make a “true” line or something similar that would show the actual, formatted size of the drive. They’d probably through in some other gimmick to make it a little more marketable, but I bet you if one company would just release one line of drives that showed the actual size, the others would follow suit and we’d eventually get to a point where there is no special line; all HDD’s show their true capacity.

An unlikely future, but a guy can dream, right?

Tim on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:15 pm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Up here in Canada, we have a meter and kilometer. A kilometer is 1,000 meters, not 1,024 meters. So if I have a byte and a kilobyte, a kilobyte should be 1,000 bytes, right? Then, a gigabye would be 1,000,000,000 bytes and so on.

If you read the above article, you’ll find that in “1998, the IEC, then the IEEE has normalized a new model describing binary prefixes avoiding consumer confusion.” So really, what’s going on here is that the drive manufacturers are in the right calling the drive 500GB. Your OS should be calling it 465GiB. Two different units.

Rowlings on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:15 pm


Sean,

To say all the consumers computer operating system makers are wrong is ridiculous. Who are the hard drive makers designing drives for if not them?

that’s like auto manufacturers advertising their cars get 40 hectares to the liter of kerosene (to quote the Simpsons) when roads are measured using miles.

Brian on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:15 pm


Just to let you know the reason that there is less hard drive space is because of two things. One, the operating system uses about 1Gb of hard drive depending on the size of it, no matter if it’s Vista, or Ubuntu, you’re going to lose hard drive space. Two, You have to realize that hard drive space is depended on the partition program that you use. For example, if you run Windows XP you hard drive that is 1000TB will turn to 925TB because the program takes out 7% of the hard drive space for hard drive buffering which is very important. It might be 35Gb that you’re wasting, but most of it goes to buffering.

Brady on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:16 pm


Who really cares? Everybody knows that this is how it works. We know that our 500gb drive isn’t going to hold 500gb of data. Making manufacturers publish different numbers is just going to tell us what we already know.

naju on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:27 pm


A good way to implement the idea for hard drive manufacturers would simply be to switch to the new binary prefix standardized by the IEEE. This way the distinction would be made clear for consumers. For example, with the SI prefix, you have a GB which is 1,000,000,000 or 10^9 bytes, with binary prefix you have a GiB which is 1024×1024x1024 or 2^30 bytes. Btw, this also means that currently, they are not doing false advertising, they are really giving you 100GB when they label it as such, which is 100,000,000,000 bytes and not 100*1024*1024*1024.

They would simply advertise in GiB and make it clear.

For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

aliron on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:34 pm


The guy speaking about his internet connection being 512, that’s not 512 kilobytes per second, but 512 kilobits per second, which is probably stated everywhere in your ISP service. It’s really not anyone’s fault that different parts of the industry uses different measuring sticks. On the box of all the hard drives I’ve bought it says “1 gig = 1,000,000,000 bytes”

Joel Fagin on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:36 pm


It’s not the binary math, nor is it malicious on their part. It’s to do with how hard drives are made.

Hard drives have extremely high engineering tolerances and the slightest ripple in the surface of the disk will make that part of the drive unusable - make a bad sector, in fact. The tolerances are so high that you simply cannot get a perfect, 100% smooth hard drive on which you can use the entire disc surface.

So what they do is make hard drives 10% bigger, knowing that they will lose some space to the imperfect surfaces of the discs. On average, they lose 10% of their space to bad sectors. Some go as high as 20%.

So when you buy a hard drive, it’s +/- 10%.

And, of course, the cheaper drives are those which are nearly -10%.

MAC TV on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:37 pm


Well said! It’s annoying how its a common practice and while the uninformed consumer may be pissed off, the computer clerks just scoff at it as if its something to be expected. I’ve always thought this was a stupid pratice, but it hasn’t been until recent times where they are selling hard drives that are 100+gb that you really start to lose out on a serious chunk of hd space. 32gb is nothing small, that’s not just “rounding” that’s hd company stealing.

Cole on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:48 pm


The whole kibi-, mebi- and gibi- prefixes are a bad solution to a problem which shouldn’t have even existed. In the context of computers, there is no reason why kilo-, mega- and giga- cannot represent a base of 2.

In every other aspect of the industry, 1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Every single aspect. Even with ISP’s where they would have something to gain by using base 10, 1 kilobit/s = 128 Bytes/s, not 100 Bytes/s.

The new *bi- prefixes should just be avoided. It’s going the wrong direction to a problem that will eventually just solve itself (that is, HDD manufacturers will begin to put base-2 byte values, or be replaced by flash manufacturers)

calculator on Fri, 3rd Aug 2007 11:51 pm


The hard drive manufactures make it publicly known that they publish their capacities in base10. It’s not a secret. They’ve ALWAYS done it that way. If you believe in the metric system, you would probably prefer that everything be base10-derived, including computer capacities.

Why’s it such a big deal to accept that hard drive capacity is marketed differently than what the operating system on your computer may display the capacity as?

The “df” command has the option to display capacity in base10 or base2, as do other utilities.

Ross on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:00 am


This is a pretty late argument in the game. Hard drives as we know them will be obsolete in less than three years.

Matthew Waters on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:06 am


The hard drive manufacturers are giving the real capacity of the hard drive. The SI standards say that a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes - but that’s already been explained in detail by ryan with his excellent post.

I wanted to touch on the “$4999.99 rather than $5000″ issue. The real reason that originally happened is because when cash registers first started being used, cashiers were just putting round figure cash amounts into the register without actually running the numbers on the register, meaning that the totals from the register at the end of the day/shift were wrong. They knocked a penny off the price in order to force the cashier to put the payment through the register in order to give change. This meant more accurate counts through the register and less cashiers dipping their hands into the company’s cash. Now it’s just part of our culture.

Matthew Waters on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:09 am


@Brian:

Your post is completely wrong. We’re talking about formatted capacity, which means while the drive is blank with just the filesystem on it. 7% of the drive is not reserved for “hard drive buffering” - the drives have a small amount on NVRAM on the circuit board for buffering, most operating systems use some system RAM for it too.

Dave-O on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:16 am


I notice you went with the cargo capacity in you automotive analogy. Perhaps mileage would have been a better example. As in no one gets the milage promised by their automaker either.

The strong point of your argument is that a 64GB flash drive is not the same as a 64GB hard drive. You’d think we would have one standard for storage devices.

Toonce on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:16 am


Yep. I agree. Like buying 20 gallons of gas, paying for it, but the pump only delivers 18.5 gallons. Or like getting 1.00 worth of gas, but having to pay 3.00 for it because of an entire industry price fixing their way to record multi billion dollar profits….

elmimmo on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:19 am


>They’re following the SI prefix.
> If you want to complain to anyone, complain to the operating systems for using the wrong symbols

> So really, what’s going on here is that the drive manufacturers are in the right calling the drive 500GB. Your OS should be calling it 465GiB

I guess that was sarcasm, but just for the sake of the argument I do want to answer that.

When one stupid doc (however “standard” or “international”) says one thing, and absolutely all and every single device that plays with those figures, which are totally omnipresent in our everyday life, use another agreed upon scale, it is that one is correct and the other is bullshit, and it is easy to spot which one it is.

This “1GB as in 1.000.000 KB” is the most stupid thing I have ever read. How about adding a sticker that reads “1GB as in 237 KB”? That would give us all even bigger hard drives and make everybody happie, uh?

James on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:29 am


Tim, what you are asking is for the mangling of the base 2 system.
for fun, convert 1024 DEC to BIN (base 10 to base 2). I think it will clear things up quite a bit for you. Look to thinks from their core, not the consumer facade.

charlie on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:34 am


you know, TAKE IT TO COURT!!!!!!!! i bet you would win, it is “false advertising”

Sean on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:35 am


FYI, Megabit and gigabit mean 1 million bits and 1 billion bits respectively.

uhhhhhhh on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:38 am


Brian, you’re wrong. See earlier explanations about Giga vs. Gibi for the real reason HDD’s are “so much smaller than advertised.” This is not to say that the OS and page-file don’t take up any space at all, but they really have nothing to do with the point of this article. I suppose it doesn’t help that the author of the article seems ignorant of the facts laid out in the comments section regarding the SI prefix issue, brushing them off in the article as if they are meaningless.

In short, Brian, those things matter somewhat, but they don’t explain the “missing space,” especially when it comes to external hard drives which contain no OS or page file.

Kurt on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:41 am


Rowlings,

What are the OS makers designing software for if not for being put on hard drives?

Really, all the software manufacturers have done is understated just how much space their files take up. That may have been their coy plan back when storage was expensive.

SI exists for a reason. Its time for software to obey it.

bkh on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:43 am


It’s impossible for the manufacturer to specify a “formatted” amount, since different filesystems have different amounts of overheard. Should they list the NTFS amount? What about FAT32? HPFS for Macs? Macs are supposed to be getting ZFS soon. Linux natively runs Ext2, Ext3, Reiser, Reiser4, XFS, and JFS with more if you look for them.

Additionally, it’s important to note that traditionally, Unix-style filesystems will reserve 5% of the disk for root-only, so that when a user maxes out the drive, there’s still room for root to go in and get things done. Linux does this by default and I assume Mac OSX aswell. You might want to poke around at the filesystem options, you may find another 5% you never knew you had. In linux, the program is “tune2fs”. I assume there’s something similar for macs.

mike on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 1:05 am


Ummmm I have a friend sitting in a s*&t hole somewhere in Iraq on his second tour. PLEASE DON”T START on the war, the president, etc… I am just trying to make point. AND I know it was his choice to join the military.

But don’t you think we have BIGGER things to worry about than this. I am an “IT Professional”, Geek, gamer, etc… I could give a rats a$$ about this issue and any side job I have ever had to explain this was easy.
“Unfortunately in order for the drive to keep track of the information, it needs a percentage of the drive for itself.” That is not ENTIRELY true but its close enough for someone who doesn’t understand and wants a quick answer!
Now can we please move on to something else.

ArkavianX on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 1:21 am


I recently bought a Maxtor 300GB drive at Office Depot and took noticed that the box actually said the drive inside the box was a 320GB model instead of the 300gb…

The 320 still formatted to about 299GB i think, but at least Maxtor ’seemed’ to understand…

Tim2TheRevenge on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 1:39 am


It’s a long standing disagreement between CS+ECE people EE+Physics people. Fact is, that while it’s convenient to count in binary in CS and ECE, it’s confusing to people if the terms for the powers are the same terms used in base 10 counting by EE and Physics people.

Think of it this way, that 500GB hard drive has 500,000,000,000 bytes. Each byte is 8 bits, but to store 8 bits you need parity bits and ecc bits, so when they sell you a 500GB HD they’re selling one with 625GB on it, of which only 500GB can be used for user data. When the operating system uses it, it tells you whatever it feels like telling you. Fact is, you still have 500GB at your disposal regardless of what the OS says. Granted if they OS says you have 500 you really have more than that in actual GB.

Tim2TheRevenge on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 1:45 am


Please don’t format a 500GB drive with FAT32. In fact don’t bother to go beyond MS’s 32 GiB limit. You wouldn’t be able to make any files larger that 4 GiB.

Deiz on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 1:45 am


Brady, there are plenty of people who don’t know / haven’t accepted this fact.

A rather computer-illiterate friend of mine phoned Dell tech support a few years ago, angry that his hard drive wasn’t as large as advertised.

mario on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 1:57 am


The point is not if hard drive manufacturers are right or wrong in using the SI prefixes. What’s important is that, to this day people get confused by it. And hard drive manufacturers know this damn well, yet refuse to do anything about it. And there’s technically nothing stoping them from just fucking printing both - GiB and GB(base10) numbers - onto the hdd cartons.
They don’t do this to uphold international standard measurement units. They do it for fraudulent reasons - from the wrong believe that tricking customers helps their bottom line.

Steve on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 2:25 am


Hey guys, sorry about my other posts. I’m a retard.

Arun on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 2:39 am


The SI prefixes have been defined for almost a century and are available at http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter3/prefixes.html Notice that kilo is defined to be 10^3, mega is defined to be 10^6, etc. This is the standard.

The confusion is due to the fact that the computer world decided to use the same prefix names for 2^10, 2^20, etc., basically violating the SI standards. In order to alleviate this confusion, since November 2000, the IEC has defined prefixes for binary multiples http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm Now 2^10 is kibi, 2^20 is mibi, etc.

So 1 G = 10^9 and 1 Gi = 2^30. If HDD manufactures use the powers of 10 system, they are adhering to the standard!

Another B Name on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 2:51 am


Understand that a disk is not just a filing cabinet where you store your files, it is just a long stream of bits that may be in order or maybe not. In order for it to be used effectively by an Operating System, there needs to be a way to understand where a file starts, where it stops, where its various blocks are, how much free space you have, file attributes, etc…so it has to function more like a database:

Here is a quickie on the ext2 file-system
http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/fs/filesystem.html

Your “missing disk space” is (aside from GB GiBi math) actually on the disk; it is being used to actually index your data so you can find it again.

Chaos Motor on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 3:49 am


“Seagate isn’t going to start advertising 465GB drives when Maxtor is selling 500GB drives.”

Seagate owns Maxtor silly.

Epic Collision on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 4:21 am


Brian, give up now you have no idea how a hdd works stop spouting your nonsensical drivel on a completely non related topic ‘tard

Josuered on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 6:11 am


When you buy a house, I am from Spain, you can see two diferents sizes, per example:
Constructed area: 100 m2
Profitable area: 85m2
It is real that the house has one hundred square meters BEFORE adding the walls but the surface you are going to use is eighty five square meters.

Hard drives manufacturers needs to switch to this way: Total size an profitable size.

Brian on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 6:40 am


Wow. Some of the disinformation here is amazing. First of all, the operating system sets aside what’s known as “swap space”, a partition manually configurable on most Linux installers, that is usually about twice the size of the amount of RAM you have installed. This can vary, and I don’t remember what Windows uses exactly, but it surely will not be 7% of a TB drive. Also, partition information is stored on the hard drive, but again, the amount of space devoted to this is minimal. The difference in the published size (in base 10) and the actual size (in base 2) is largely due to, in my opinion, lazy engineers (I would know, being one myself), and NOT due to the partitioning program or operating system you use. To represent the decimal number 1000 in binary would be 0×01111101000, whereas the decimal number 1024, being a power of 2, simply is 0×10000000000. Engineers are notorious for bad estimation/rounding, and 1024 bytes became a kilobyte because it makes the math easier.
Also, if you look on the box of any new hard drive it will specifically state the actual number of bytes. I don’t think that the argument can be made that the interpretation of the product should effect the manufacturing specification. It would cause much more confusion to change the established specification than to keep it.
As a final thought, why is this even an issue? Hard drive prices have dropped so significantly in recent times that if, in fact, you really need that extra 7% that you claim was stolen from you by the evil hard drive manufacturers, go buy another drive. Your performance will be better anyway if your drives aren’t full to the brim.

nay min thu on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 7:04 am


Umm.. I recently bought a 160 GB drive. But when I plugged it in, it showed available space of only 150GB. I felt cheated.

Dave M. on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 7:14 am


Brady, not everyone knows how it works, that’s how you sucker people into great deals. There are quite a few computer users out there that barely know what the term “keyboard” is, much less GB vrs. GiB. (Who came up with this ridiculous name anyway? GibiByte? It sounds like someone with a speech impediment!) Sure, “we” know what is going on, but “we” are a special breed of people that geek out on stuff like this. Normal folk don’t understand all these terms and barely understand what a byte is and really don’t care.

OK, after digging through the Wikipedia stuff, I can see what is going on here. The SI folks were unhappy about the computer community using metric terms for binary values. It would be like saying 1000 miles is a KiloMile or KM. I can see where they are coming from since they want to keep things simple and in base 10 units.

I suppose it all started with frequency values. When computers were rated at 2 KHz or KiloHertz, they figured that measuring the about of memory in a computer would also be good with Kilo and Mega.

So my computers 2GB’s of memory is really a 2.147483648GB computer? That’s not going to fly with computer manufacturers. I supposed they could say 2GiB’s, but when they have to say GibiBytes, people are going to laugh at them. If the IEC wanted to come up with a new standard that describes binary multiples better, they had better come up with something that does sound like a 6 month old is trying to say it.

Sultan on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 7:51 am


Wow. Human stupidity and ignorance is really limitless. Get over it, stupid: 1 Gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. This can be looked up in the standards, so you will probably loose if you go to court. Get a life!

Waide on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 8:12 am


All I have to say is I am looking at the top of an old (4gb) seagate hard drive right now and it says it’s binary capacity right on the sticker, I think that it is the retailers that are benefiting from this deception more than the manufacturers, as every hdd I have ever bought has had the binary capacity printed on the sticker (if it had a capacity written on it at all)

Anonymous on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 8:27 am


Waide, printed on the sticker (likely extremely small) on the drive is different than the GIANT number advertised on the outside of the box, or in a catalog.

Sure, geeks know what is going on, but 99% of the world doesn’t. Remember, there are people who have not heard of an iPod. Scary, but true.

jack on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 8:55 am


you’re totally right. this has annoyed me since forever too and i’ve always been baffled at how they can just get away with it. i think it’s simply because most people don’t understand it.

Matt on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 9:05 am


The manufacturers are correct.
Kilo = 10^3x
Mega = 10^6x
Giga = 10^9x
Tera = 10^12x

That’s why, if you’re going to be accurate you take about kibi, mebi, gibi and teri bytes. which are 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, 2^40 respectively.

I’m not saying it’s not misleading but they are correct.

george on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 9:10 am


If my OS tells me a file is 240kb on disk (245,760 bytes), then 240k means some 246,000 bytes. it makes no sense for a hard drive manufacturer to come and offer me a drive that’s 100,000,000,000 bytes and label it as 100gig. CDs are not 681Meg and 734Meg, but DVDs are 4.7G and not the 4.3 they are. A Gig of ram is 1024megs.. I hate this inconsistency of units. I’d be happy if the OS told me a file is 246kb on disk and that I have 3G space left instead of 2.8. Or I’d be happy to have my harddrive equal 100G if it’s labeled as such. Just fsckin decide on units already, ok?

belteshazzar on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 9:25 am


technically its not misleading … mega, giga are base 10 meaurements, with the use of binary in computers they have always been used, but they have always been names used because they were close. mega means a million, when talking about a computers its just been implied that it was 2^30 BUT the term mega means 10^6 always has, always will. WHEN SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT COMPUTERS SAYS MEGA THEY IMPLICITLY MEAN MEBI … hardware manufacturers are correct, get over it. you know what it means, forget about it.

anyone getting worked up about this is slightly retarded.

belteshazzar on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 9:26 am


george, read matts comment

felch on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 10:18 am


Brian, you’re a moron. Get a clue. We’re talking about drive capacity, not drive usage, both of which are plainly visible in any operating system. Go back to playing Halo you paint huffer.

Axel on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 11:44 am


Idiots, formated capacity varies depending on the use. UFS2 vs FAT32 vs NTFS vs HFS ect ect.

Get a freaking clue, go find a cause that sounds plausible till you count on reality.

SUD on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:24 pm


I bought a Hitachi 80GB once but it actually had 82GB of space, so i was alright, but i wonder why??????

David on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:30 pm


Um a few problems here with your article. The hard drive manufacturers DO USE BASE 10, but free space is displayed Windows and MacOS etc in base2 (’binary math’.) So a 500 GB (500 BILLION BYTE) drive appears as 465 or something. ie what seagate call a ‘GB’ (correct SI units) and what idiot anal retentive programmers call a ‘GB’ is different.

If the OS used base10, then it would say 500GB and you wouldn’t even be wasting your time on such a useless article. Windows can count space any way it likes, it could use units of CHICKENS and you would be like HEY where are my missing chickens??

How this got on front page of Digg is beyond me.

WTL on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 12:50 pm


I for one would like to see this changed to reflect what space is actually available.

I am curious, though - I wonder what the differences are (in available space) between the various formats are like.

Mike on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 2:21 pm


Ok, here’s a solution. If they can sell me a 500GB drive with the legend (1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes), then I should be able to buy it with dollars labeled ($1=107.4 cents).

Scoobs on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 2:37 pm


Who cares? Its a labeling issue morons

stuart on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 2:50 pm


run fdisk on your drive… it will tell you the “rounded” numbers for your drive size. it all has to do with the layout of a hard disk and the way it is formatted. the numbers that are on the box have been correct for me according to fdisk every time. when i pull the drives up in linux or windows the sizes are usually much different.

want another example? create a virtual machine with a drive size of your choosing, the virtual os will not see the entire amount of space free (as previously mentioned by the differences in formatting plus partition tables and mbr’s).

hd manufacturers give the number they do because it is the only way to dependably give you data about the drive. there are too many file systems out there for them to name the capacity under each one. You purchase a drive for the hardware, the manufacturers do not really care what you do with them after that. They give you hardware specs, thats all.

Jim Q on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 3:15 pm


I found this extreemly annoying when I bought a Zip Drive and found that the more I stored the smaller the disk got and for 100 meg on a zip disk, I got some times as little as 60 megs of actual storage.

Anonymous on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 3:35 pm


Just do you know. HFS+ isn’t really in the top 3 of format ways. Maybe for the consumer, but not in the real world. ext2/3 is much higher.

Dave M. on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 4:36 pm


So what is with some of these comments here. If you can’t be civil in your comment, I suggest not commenting. There is no need to call someone a name to drive your point home. If your point has merit, it won’t need any other aid other than the point itself.

Reading these comments, I learned a lot about this new standard that was developed back in ‘99 and why. I wasn’t aware of it before. I just wish the committee had come up with better names than kibi, mebi and gibi. They just don’t sound good and computer manufacturers are not going to embrace a new standard that puts their product in a bad light of any kind.

Brent on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 6:04 pm


This is a simple misunderstanding, hard drive companies are not doing any thing wrong. Manufacturers put out numbers based on the premise that a Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes. However operating systems run on the premise that a Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes. So you are not losing any space its just allocated differently.

It is like if you called a dozen 12 but the store called 24 a dozen. If you buy 24 eggs you still have 24 eggs whether you call it one dozen or two dozen, it is just a name.

Levi on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 6:30 pm


Three cheers for David’s post up above.

The average consumer sees a megabyte as one million bytes, and a gigabyte as one billion bytes. That some get confused by the disparity between the base-10 count in advertisements and the base-2 count done by an operating system is not the fault of the hard drive manufacturer.

matt on Sat, 4th Aug 2007 8:55 pm


i recently bought a maxtor 300 gb drive and they put an extra 20 gb to solve the problem with formatting

Endiel on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 12:07 am


What you’re asking for is nonsensical: There are far too many variables for drive manufacturers to be able to tell you how much data you’ll really be able to put on the drive. What filesystem(s) will you be putting on the drive (NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, HPFS, JFS, ReiserFS)? Will you be using any special partitions (swap, hibernate)? Will you be using any sort of logical volume management? RAID? What kind of files will you be putting on the system (if you use a lot of little files, you lose space to “sector overhang”)?

It makes far more sense for them to simply say “Here’s the raw amount of space you’re going to get. Oh, and by the way, 1GB = a billion bytes.” Every drive I’ve bought for the last quite a few years has had that statement quite clearly written on the outside of the packaging. And since they always round down in the advertising, every drive I’ve bought for the last quite a few years has also technically had more space than advertised.

If you want to be an anal-retentive twit, go look up the freaking drive specs yourself to figure out exactly how many bytes the drive has before you buy it.

Ethan on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 2:08 am


There have been a lot of very informative comments on this post, especially those pointing out that the HDD manufacturers are very correct in their numbering of GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes. I strongly support the idea of standards, so I appreciate the idea of the GiB standard. However, this was never about who was right and who was wrong. This is about the consumer.

I understand very well the different factors that come into this issue - base 2/base 10, SI measurements, etc. - but I honestly could care less who is right in their numbering, what needs to change, etc. The article was written from a consumer standpoint, and I, not being in the HDD storage industry, am looking at the issue from a consumer standpoint.

From a consumer’s point of view, when they see “500GB” (or “500GiB”, but I’ll use GB for example) on a box they need to be able to go home, install the drive and see 500GB of formatted space on their monitor. They need to have 500GB to use. It must be consistent. For a consumer, the technical aspects of how that consistency came about do not matter. Even if it means they are getting slightly less space because it is measured in GB instead of GiB.

I suppose I should not that one technical limitation of this consistency is that different file-systems differ slightly in their formatting. If someone buys a 500GB drive and gets only 499.9xGB because of their file-system’s formatting method, you might say that the consistency is lost. No one is petty enough to complain about 100MB lost in formatting. A good industry standard would be an allowable 1GB fluctuation to account for issues such as formatting.

The number of GB or TB must be consistent from box to drive to formatting to OS, regardless of the technical means and allowing for slight fluctuations in formatting.

Anonymous on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 3:32 pm


The amount of a harddrive is actually 40gigs… or at least extremly close to this.

The number that is missing from your hard drive is actually what is UNAVAILABLE! Not simply not there. Go into your settings, if you are using windows and have not changed anything you’ll have more than 5gigs set up for the amount thats set aside for system restore info as they automatically hold normally 3 months back.

This and amount of space reserved for recyling bin and such easily adds up almost to the 40 gigs that are adverticed (39.4gigs on my 40 gig hard drive, my 80 gig having more than 78)

imajoebob on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 6:23 pm


I’m pretty sure that either the hard drive manufacturers are violating federal regulations, or the software publishers are using outdated calculations. If it’s the latter, there’s not much to do, especially since everything software does is binary, and you can’t change that.

On the other hand, there is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE), and American National Standards Institute. All of these groups have established standard measurement of a byte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc. Unfortunately, there are two definitions of these standards. One is for data storage (scaled at 1024) and one for data transfer (scaled at 1000). Even though they disk makers know the difference (and know that even neophyte users expect a 100GB drive to read as 100GB on their computer), and may be technically defensible, they’re being deliberately misleading.

One of two things has to happen: either these groups establish clearly defined limitations of which definition is appropriate, or if that’s already been done the hard drive manufacturers should be charged with deceptive practices by the FTC.

Siddharth on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 10:11 pm


i agree, but in actual mathematical terms, Mega is 10 to the power of 6 and giga is ten power 9, so they also have a valid reason to do this.

Gareth on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 11:07 pm


I just realized two mistakes of mine…and since we’re on topic of telling the truth:

Aerial should be areal as in area (thanks Tom), and those areal densities are INCREASING!!

In one inch extending from the center of a platter these days, there are more than 160,000 tracks and counting.

Gareth on Sun, 5th Aug 2007 11:37 pm


Two corrections:

Aerial –> Areal (like area, thanks Tom)

Areal densities are INCREASING.

In one inch extending from the disc center to the outer radius, there are more than 160,000 data tracks and counting.

van on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 7:57 am


I hate it when morons like you have access to other people…

To qoute:
“If I were to sell you a dozen eggs, would you be OK with opening the carton and finding 9 eggs? If a car company were to put up a big sign advertising their new mini van had 100 cubic feet of cargo space, but it actually had about 75, do you think you would have the right to complain? Then why is it we all just accept the misleading way hard drive manufacturers advertise the amount of space on their drives?”

12 eggs promised. 9 eggs received. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!

100 cubic feet promised. 75 cubic feet received. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!

500 GB disk space cubic promised. 465 GB disk space cubic received. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!

But, unlike your 2 MORONIC examples, you ACTUALLY GET 500 GB disk space. As promised. It’s like opening a carton with a dozen eggs, and finding a dozen eggs!!! Or advertising a new mini van with 100 cubic feet of cargo space, but it actually had 100 cubic feet of cargo space!!!

Similar with your other MORONIC examples… Your MAC HAS 500 GB. Not 465.5…

It’s just that your brain can’t comprehend a small calculation to convert, it seems…

But, OK, if you really want it that way, rename a GB to something else. Call it a DFB (dumb-füçk byte), which equates to 0.xxx GB. So, when you refer to 500 DFB, you get 500 DFB.

But the fact remains, you still get 500 GB, which equates to

van on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 7:58 am


Ugh… List interest halfway through…

ERM on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 8:30 am


I have an easy solution - overfill the drive so that it has 1TB when you format it. So if a 1 TB drive is 965 GB, then make a 1.5 TB drive and sell it as a 1 TB drive so that you get what it says on the box!

Oh Blah Dee Blah Dah on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 8:45 am


RE: DAN KNIGHT:

“On hard drives, there is no difference between preformatted and formatted capacity - that’s a distinction from the floppy drive era.”

No, there is no difference between pre- and post- formatted capacity, however, in each case you should be receiving EXACTLY the amount of capacity that you are told you are buying!

RE: DAN KNIGHT::

“… the difference is a very consistent 7-8% between advertised (digital) capacity and reported binary capacity. It’s no worse on a 700 GB drive than a 3 GB one.”

You missed the point. Yes, 7 to 8 percent is the same percentage loss for any size drive, however, the absolute amount of loss INCREASES with drive size. For example, If you bought a candy bar for $1 and received 7% less candy, that is a loss of only 7 cents. But, if you bought a house for a million dollars, which is very easy to do on the east and west coasts of the U.S., receiving 7% less house is a loss of $70,000 dollars!

A poor person might not care about a loss of 7 cents on a candy bar. A wealthy person WOULD care VERY MUCH about losing $70,000 of value on a house!

So, as the hard drives become bigger, the ABSOLUTE size of the loss becomes larger.

How would you like to be hired at a company at $100,000 a year salary, yet be given only $93,000 (7% less salary) in wages during the year, because the company “has a agreement with the rest of its industry” that it defines $100,000 to be worth only $70,000?

The hard drive industry has been misleading consumers for too long, and the government should have stepped in a long time ago.

Scotto on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 12:40 pm


If I sold you a dozen eggs, you smashed 3 of them and then complained that there were only 9, I’d be irritated with _you_.

If I advertised a minivan w/100 ft^3 of space and you put 40 ft^3 of boxes into it and then complained that you couldn’t fit your entire fat family in there, I would laugh.

Did you know that your 1 Gb/s ethernet port will never give you a full 1 Gb/s of OS-level file transfer?

Did you know that you will never be able to use all of your (e.g.) 2GB of RAM for applications?

Did you know that not every clock cycle of your fancy quad-core 2.66 Ghz processor is available for your applications?

Did you know that you are paying for 8 copper conductors in your CAT5 patch cables, but standard ethernet only uses 4?

Did you know that your 802.11g wireless connection will probably never give you 54mbps of useable bandwidth?

I can go on…

What rip-offs! And shocking, I’m sure… I should write some articles and get dugg!

Paul on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 5:41 pm


They could just give you drives sized so that they come out at the round-figures (much better for advertising/reading to see 500gb than 46gb). So if they one that is say 550gb but advertise it at 500 then they wouldn’t be far wrong.

It does say on the small print of all the specs i’ve seen that they say ‘formatted size is around x’ (at least on my iBooks and Macbooks that i’ve purchase, also I think on my shuffle. I imagine this is the same across many computer firms

Richard on Mon, 6th Aug 2007 10:52 pm


“Making the distinction clear” as suggested by one poster mere serves to sanctify the fraud. The simple fact of the matter is that the drives do no, can not, and never have held the quantities of data stated. All else is sham and fraud.

It is about time to bring an end to this shameless practice.

Even supposedly knowledgeable sources continue to propagate the misunderstanding by talking about putting 4.7 GB of data on a (single layer) DVD.

Enough!

lol @ you on Tue, 7th Aug 2007 4:07 am


fuck me, there’s some faggots about

are you that bothered about a minor loss of space?

PLacebo on Tue, 7th Aug 2007 12:41 pm


Sorry to rain on your parade, this has been a known fact since hard drives were manuafactured. How about instead of complaining that someone else should change to make life simpler for you. You wake up, and deal with the way things work.. I havent heard this much whining since my 2 year old started teething.

sumdood on Tue, 7th Aug 2007 10:30 pm


I have noticed on my software requirements they list them in GB of free HD space needed (2GB , 5GB etc…) after installation it uses about that amount listed in windows. So why is the GB listed on the software requirements different from the GB listed on the HD packaging. Isn’t a GB a GB…?

So if you buy software that is 10GB in size, and bought a hard drive(With windows and cache and all the other stuff already installed…so please don’t say windows uses space etc..)and has 10GB of “ADVERTISED” free space,it would not fit, because all the software that I own uses the binary count or what not for the requirements.

Why would you list the GB of a hard drive with the decimal count when all the software that will be used for it is in binary. And yes the software shows just GB.

Joe on Thu, 9th Aug 2007 12:22 am


Ummm…where have you been the last several years?? This issue was already hashed out in the courts when Western Digital got sued over this very thing. The courts decided that the hard drive manufacturers reckoning of a gigabyte was correct.

fuctis on Thu, 9th Aug 2007 9:01 am


this is the most stupid blog post i’ve ever read…

If you are bringing up the issue between the GB and GiB, so in this case HDD manufacturers are 100% correct and you should blame bill (gates) that the windows actually calculate GiBs but show them as GB.

tekchip on Thu, 9th Aug 2007 3:42 pm


Hdd manufacturers have no way to account for file system overhead either which also grows as the drive size grows. Tie that in the way the manufacturers calculate and you lose even more of your “500GB”. It’s a fact of computing that will never change until the storage media changes significantly. If you want to regain at least some of that space then go back to fat which has far less file system overhead than say ext3 or NTFS but then enjoy your lost files and system instabilities…oh yeah…wait…you can’t…fat won’t support drives that large. Please take this down it just adds to the garbage I all ready have to sift through to find useful information.

Al on Sun, 12th Aug 2007 6:43 am


You are a moron. A drive has to be referred to in unformatted capacity. Hey you buy a house in Sq FT don’t you? But do you start to complain that you got ripped off when you put in your furniture and you have less usable space? No? Because you know that you will have to use some space to put sofas and tables and other things.

Likewise when you buy a drive you know you are going to format it. So do the maths, take 7% off and there you go. There is no need for the manufacturer to do it for you. Requested such a need just proves how lame people are getting these days.

If I really wanted to I could write one file to my 1TB and use all 1TB. It’s a matter of choice my friend, something which we have in the free world. If drive manufacturers started quoting formatted capacity they would be inaccurrate. This is because there are more than just Windows Morons like you who all they can see is NTFS formatting, but think OS/2 linux, mac, HP-UX, OS/2, Unix, solaris, centos etc… That all adds up to well over 50 different formatting methods right there.

I propose a second internet one where moron like you can’t come and fill up our space with shit. Man if drive manufactures gave you those extra GB you’d just find a way to fill it with useless garbage like this. I can’t believe I’ve wasted my time commenting on this crap.

rpgfan3233 on Sun, 12th Aug 2007 2:59 pm


If you can’t figure out something like this, bring a calculator when you shop! You divide by 1.024 (1024 KiB/1000KB) for every power of 1000 to get the *iB form or multiply by 1.024 for every power of 1000 to get the equivalent *B form.

On a 40GB hard drive, I had approximately 37.2GB free according to Windows. Let’s convert that:
1GB = 1000^3 B
40 / 1.024^3 B = 37.25 GiB (approximately)

Simply put, for each increasing unit, you add a power of 1000, meaning that you also add a power of 1.024. Simple enough. To convert from *iB to *B, you simply multiply by 1.024 the same number of times:
1 GiB = 1024^3 B
37.25 * 1.024^3 B = 39.99688GB (it rounds up to 40GB)

Percentages and whatever other crap doesn’t matter. This is the math behind it, and the confusion is caused by the fact that many operating systems are using what is now the *iB form where confusion used to be “Is 1GB = 1000MB or is 1GB = 1024MB?” It is the fault of the OS for using the now improper unit of measure to describe the amount of space on the HDD.

Brandon on Mon, 13th Aug 2007 7:12 am


I disagree, the hard drive data storage standard fits with the SI standard prefixes for Byte, for example 1 kilobyte is 10^3 Bytes. What windows uses, on the other hand, does not follow the SI prefixes, in windows a Kilobyte is 2^10 bytes, and 2^20 for Mega vs 10^6. So windows is in error and is using a rounded and incorrect standard. In fact a Windows Kilobyte should not be identified as kB, for this is classified as 10^3 but as KiB and subsequently MiB instead of MB, for that is misleading. It is, in fact, just as misleading as B and b, for there is a difference, B is Byte, and generally used for data storage, and is generally 8 bits in length. And a bit (or b) is a binary digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1. For example, the number 10010111 is 8 bits long. So it is incorrect to blame the manufacturer for they are use the scientifically correct measurement of data storage space.

Brandon on Mon, 13th Aug 2007 7:14 am


… umm, so for the record, i didn’t read any of the previous posts… so my comment was kind of irrevalent. I had only read the first comment thinking that it was the latest.

SiriS on Mon, 13th Aug 2007 8:41 pm


Your internet connections (to the dude way up there) isn’t that fast because that’s how fast it CAN go. It’s slower because what your accessing has a slower connection/tons of people connected/far away/if it’s on a router then that’s your local network speed.

Longbowe on Wed, 15th Aug 2007 9:30 pm


Lets see here. I would like everyone to bend down to their computer and ask it to compute 2 + 2 and see what it tells you. NOTHING. Technology uses BINARY. You may claim that the HDD manufacturers are right in using SI, but they are not. They are not right in using this method. Do you think the CPU gives a care whether your HDD manufacturer advertised in proper SI units? The computer computes the bytes to be based off the binary system because of how technology is. You figure out a way to have a processor recognize ten separate numbers using unique voltage pulses,(Thats one pulse per number) then and only then can you sit here and say HDD manufacturers are doing it right. 2^10 = 1024. Thats how the computer sees it, thats how the consumer should see it… Computer Memory manufacturers advertise in binary, why can’t these HDD manufacturers?

Oh and for those of you running around screaming “GiB” read the article again, there is no standard for using GiB, it was a recommendation. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GigaByte ) Get your facts straight before you refer someone to a website you supposedly got this “information” from.

Al on Wed, 29th Aug 2007 4:44 pm


Forget about hard drive capacities. The REAL rip-off is when you buy a “2 by 4″ that isn’t actually 2 inches by 4 inches!

Mystar on Sun, 6th Jan 2008 4:54 pm


I agree, to a point, that ALL hard drive manufacturers should have to report what you get from a hard drive after it is formatted. However, as for this space being lost, is it really lost or is it reserverd for something else?
The way I understand it is that when we get our brand new drives and plug them in they don’t have a file system which is the reason why they need to be formatted. It would seem to me that when manufacturers say that actual size varies by which file system the drive is formatted with, they are correct because each file system has overhead which is a factor in the actual space that will be made available.
And furthermore, do we even actually get to USE that whole 465.5GB? There’s a defragmenting program that requires at least 21% of the drive to be empty before it can even defrag the hard drive. This has recently changed to 2% with the newest version of the program, however. But still, after these factors are considered when spending money on a hard drive, we could end up with only approximately 365GB USABLE hard drive space.
Again, I agree that it would be nice to look in the file explorer and see the total size as 500GB for each 500GB drive in my system, but it doesn’t work that way (yet). I also agree that here should be some sort of regulation for manufacturers to advise consumers that their 500GB hard will only have 465.5GB usable. But then wouldn’t they also need to advise consumers how much free space should be left available depending on what the drive is being used for?
At some point it has to be up to the consumer to find out for themselves and understand how the process of hard drive usage works.
And how can we really blame it on calculation methods? A computer operates with a binary method, but humans understand the decimal better. I think what is being highly overlooked is the fact that it’s the file system which accounts for the difference in space. That space is neither lost nor is it missing because that space is accounted for somewhere. We have 500GB in our hands when we put a new drive in and we end up with only seeing 465.5GB because the other 34.5GB is being used by the file system so that WE can USE that 465.5GB available.
I really think people should stop seeing that space difference as a loss or missing and look deeper for understanding in where that space actually went. The manufacturer says it depends on the file system. Why is that so hard to understand that is where the space is going and that is where people should look…to find out why NTFS is only letting us use 465.5GB. Can we really justify expecting the manufacturer to rearrange the way hard drives fit into the systems just to fit our decimal needs?
I still wouldn’t mind seeing the 500GB in Explorer, but I think I understand the method enough to accept the difference and not blame it on a conspiracy to rip us off 35GB.
I’m sure there’s people within the manufactures who think people are stupid, just as there are people in IT departments who don’t know even half of what they claim to know. But the bottom line is that if we really want a 500GB drive that will give us something closer to that 500GB than 465.5GB, then someone needs to design a file system program that will do it.

LigerMax on Tue, 22nd Jan 2008 2:54 am


I agree. This so annoying what these Hard drive manufacture companies are doing. I recently upgrade my laptop hard drive and in order for me to be sure I have at least 100gb of storage space in it I need to look for an laptop hard drive with at least 120gb (advertised). The same issue comes up when you want to explain to your 10 clients that they do have 100gb of storage space each from your 1 Tera-server!!??

sahan on Wed, 18th Jun 2008 6:42 pm


Yeah Not Only Hard Disk drives even internet when u have a 20 Gb plan what you Really get is 20000 instead of 20480 the problem i see with this is if you exceed even 1 mb after 20000 i.e 20001 they will start charging you?? I am Just Furiose about that They Should not charge people until they exceed real 20 GB

ExSlyder on Wed, 19th Nov 2008 1:18 pm


I remember the ability to format a 360kb floppy to 400kb, it was amazing, 40k extra for storage!!!

I’m gonna go old school on ya.

1 bit = 1 bit
4 bits = 1 nibble
8 bits = 1 byte
=== Here is where SI has issues ===
On a computer, which operates SOLELY on binary calculations:
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
And so on…

Thus, a byte is still a byte. It’s not like SI is saying, okay, a byte is actually only 7 bits.

We could avoid all the confusion by the drive manufacturers always listing the actual number of BYTES, and leave the semantics and interpretation of wether it’s a Gigabyte, a Gibibyte, etc. to the consumer.

ExSlyder on Wed, 19th Nov 2008 1:24 pm


Just remember, there are 10 kinds of people in the world, the ones who understand binary, and the ones who dont.

Odhinn on Sun, 29th Mar 2009 8:12 pm


Ok, this is probably a rather later reply, however, I read your post and had to say something. I’ll start off with the fact that there are quite a few problems with your explanation of the missing space. Mind you, I whole-heartily agree with the fact that they need to stop misrepresenting this missing space. However, your explanation is, frankly (and no offense) wrong.

Ok, to begin with the explanation, a bit is a 1 or a 0. A byte is 8 bits. This is the same for both binary and non-binary counting methods as it’s the building block (sort of like 0-9 in base ten). Where they diverge is with the prefixes. Technically a kilobyte (KB) is 1000 bytes. In binary a kibibyte (KiB) is 1024 bytes. Manufacturers use the decimal prefix so for every KB you are shy 24 bytes from being a KiB. Then you have 1000 KB in a MB, 1024 KiB in a MiB (mibi), 1000 MB in a GB, and 1024 MiB in a GiB (gebi). So technically when we say Kilo, Mega, or Giga bytes, we are referring to the decimal prefixes.

Now that is the technical difference between the binary prefixes and the decimal ones. One commonly ignored misleading factor is the operating system and whether it uses binary or decimal prefixes. I’m not sure which Mac uses but as a Unix flavor I’m inclined to surmise binary. Windows generally tends to misrepresent the binary values with the decimal prefixes. Most Linuces are the only that I’ve seen to appropriately (most of the time) use the binary prefixes.

Finally, with that explanation out of the way, I completely agree that they need to stop short changing us and go with the binary count so we get that extra space that we should have, though it would also be nice if every OS was consistent with using the correct prefix so people could eventually notice the difference.

Oh, a little side note, I’m not entirely sure if formatting takes away from the total space. It may be specific to how the OS view it. I don’t dispute that different formats take up more or less space on the drive depending on data structures, however, some may take that space away from the overall capacity and not show it as space taken up on the drive where others may show the total capacity but also show that this much space is already used.

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