False Advertising on Hard-Drive Sizes

[RhysAndrews]

Hi everybody.
For a while I've been sort of annoyed at how exact hard-drive sizes, whether you're buying a hard-drive on its own, or a HDD Mp3 Playeer or anything, are not what is advertised.

For instance, if you get a 250GB hard-drive the actual size is 232GB. This wasn't a problem years ago when 10GB hard-drives were standard. You'd miss out on about 100MB, nobody really cared. But now, you're missing out on 18GB and more. I mean, a 320GB Hard-drive is actually 298GB. That's 22GB which you could be using for hundreds of albums, tens of movies, or a few games.

I know that the calculations don't add up or whatever, and that there's some sort of explanation and that they just round the numbers. But regardless, companies are technically falsely advertising, aren't they? You are not getting what they are saying you'll get. While a 500GB is cheap and more than enough in most cases, my point still stands.

I'd just like to know what your opinions are on this.
Thanks
Rhys Andrews

 

[freestyler105]

Basically, there is that much space there, but the formatting takes it away. So it's not false advertising at all because before formatting the drive there was 500GB worth of space.

 

[compguy91]

Also some hard drive manufacturers say 1GB = 1000MB when it's actually 1024MB and that can take some space away, along with formatting.

 

[Celegorm]

For instance, if you get a 250GB hard-drive the actual size is 232GB. This wasn't a problem years ago when 10GB hard-drives were standard. You'd miss out on about 100MB, nobody really cared.

That's kinda contradicting yourself there. There was always the "false advertising" it's just the smaller drives don't show it as much.

It's not false advertising, it's just different ways of mesuring 1 gig.

If you look at it properly, one gig is one billion (10^9) bytes which is exactly how HDD manufacturers look at it. Computers technically do this wrong as they register one gig (which is supposed to be one billion by all other standards) as 1.07 billion bytes or 2^30.

Either way, this is no-one at fault. HDD makers are living up to what they say the drive can hold, and computers can't change how they look at it as they do everything in base two. All we can do is accept it.

 

[Tommy Boy]

When I was going to install windows xp on my brand new Maxtor 200 gb hard drive a while ago, it said the unpartitioned space on it was over 203gb. Formatted it took away about 11 or 12 gb I think. The file system takes up space on the drive, thats why it seems smaller, it doesn't count that as space on the drive. But if you look at it before you format it, it should be around the advertised capacity.

 

[JogaBonito1502]

Computers technically do this wrong as they register one gig (which is supposed to be one billion by all other standards) as 1.07 billion bytes or 2^30.

Computers look at it right, manufactures look at it wrong. Computers were built on binary so it's only logical that everything else is based on 2.

What he says is true though.

 

[Celegorm]

Computers look at it right, manufactures look at it wrong.

That argument can go both ways. Manufacturers go by true billion, computers by binary billion. Both are right...

 

[mammikoura]

Yes, it is false advertising.

 

[muz]

the exact vale you will get when formatted under windows is 93% of the advertised size , its always been that way always will just that windows measures the size differently to how the HDD manufacturer measures it

 

[J03]

That argument can go both ways. Manufacturers go by true billion, computers by binary billion. Both are right...

They REALLY need to make their mind up