Packerd Bell - External 500GB HDD -- 465GB only

Sully

Hi all,

I recently purchased a Packard Bell External 500GB HDD in the PC World Sale (today in fact). Set it up when I went home and the PC says there is only 465GB of space on that drive, not 500GB. Now I know the whole idea about some developers debating how much a GB actually is, and there is no set size -- it just depends on the developer -- but this seems a fairly large gap. It would be a FAT32 file system it was setup with. Would changing to NTFS give me the extra space? I asssume it would, as my 2 other internal drives are NTFS formated.

Thanks in advance..

Ghost Train

drive makers measure in bytes so...
500000000000 bytes =
bits 4000000000000
bytes 500000000000
kilobits 3906250000
kilobytes 488281250
megabits 3814697.265625
megabytes 476837.158203125
gigabits 3725.29029846191
gigabytes 465.661287307739

so 465 sounds just right
ntfs shouldn't make a differance spacewise i think

Sully

So you dont get whats advertised? Isnt that kind of false advertisement then?

weeder

i learned about this myself 40GB is 37GB 200 is 192 etc etc when i installed debian on my box the 200 appeared as 200 and the 40 as 40

Steffano2002

Sully04 wrote:

So you dont get whats advertised? Isnt that kind of false advertisement then?

Yep! And they all do it! It's common practice now...
When I first learned about this I was appalled! But I guess that's just the way it is worlwide so what can you do... :rolleyes:

olearydc

Its one of those annoying things :

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk

"Operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, frequently report capacity using the binary interpretation of the prefixes, which results in a discrepancy between the disk manufacturer's stated capacity and what the system reports."

Its also like the CRT Tv's being measured diagonal when talking about the size
LCD's were normally measured horizontial...but now I have seen a few shops selling LCD TV's measured diagonal now!!

Steffano2002

olearydc wrote:

Its also like the CRT Tv's being measured diagonal when talking about the size
LCD's were normally measured horizontial...but now I have seen a few shops selling LCD TV's measured diagonal now!!

I never knew CRTs/LCDs were measured horizontally! As far as I'm concerned it's always been done diagonally?!

irlrobins

Could be wrong on this but when you talk about a 14" CRT, 14" refers to the length of the CRT tube inside and not the screen. It just so happens that the diagonal measurement of the screen is approximately the same length as the tube.

olearydc

I am learning every day!!:D

http://windows.uwaterloo.ca/Hardware/LCD_Monitors.asp

"A 17 inch LCD gives you about as much screen area as a 19" CRT because when a CRT is sold in Canada the size is measured before it is put into its case and part of the frame actually covers up the measured part of the screen. An LCD, on the other hand, is measured corner-to-corner as well, but what you measure is what you get"


http://www.pcmech.com/show/monitors/116/

"LCD monitors are not measured using the tricky viewable area measurement. An LCD monitor is measured by the actual size of the screen. The measurement is taken diagonally, from corner to corner, just as with the CRT"

http://www.monitorgalaxy.com/buying.cfm

"1. Size: Typically, the size of a monitor is measured in inches. For CRT monitors, it is the measure from one corner to the opposing diagonal corner. This measurement includes the bezel, so the actual viewing size is smaller"

So a CRT is the total diagonally measurement of the Tube, from one corner to the opposing diagonal corner And the LCD is the diagonally measurement of actual viewing screen....I bet I will find another link which tells me differant tomorrow!!

Giblet

Always remove 7% from the advertised amount

Sully

Is it because the developer of the HDD built it for capacity of 500GB but Windows doesnt give us the whole 500GB? Or do the developers say 500GB knowing there is no way in hell your going to get that?

Even in broadband, they say "Up to 2mb" to cover themselves so people dont bitch and say they paid for 2mb speed and were not getting it etc.

astrofool

You are actually getting 500,000 megabytes of storage space.

Windows measures a gigabyte to be 1024MB, Hard drive manufacturers measure it as 1000MB, either way, it's just a way of measuring, most people don't take into account the 24MB when storing things less than a Gig.

As for monitors, always diagonal, CRT is the tube out of the casing, LCD is the actual screen area as none of it is hidden by the casing anyway.

Telco's say up to 2mb as sometimes the line quality won't be good enough to support the full connection. Also, you'll generally only get the full bandwidth if downloading from a first hop website, most others never get to full bandwidth due to other factors.

Ruu_Old

astrofool wrote:

You are actually getting 500,000 megabytes of storage space.

Windows measures a gigabyte to be 1024MB, Hard drive manufacturers measure it as 1000MB, either way, it's just a way of measuring, most people don't take into account the 24MB when storing things less than a Gig.

As for monitors, always diagonal, CRT is the tube out of the casing, LCD is the actual screen area as none of it is hidden by the casing anyway.

Telco's say up to 2mb as sometimes the line quality won't be good enough to support the full connection. Also, you'll generally only get the full bandwidth if downloading from a first hop website, most others never get to full bandwidth due to other factors.

Like dialup and 56k, that story is for another day.

Steffano2002

astrofool wrote:

You are actually getting 500,000 megabytes of storage space.

Windows measures a gigabyte to be 1024MB, Hard drive manufacturers measure it as 1000MB, either way, it's just a way of measuring, most people don't take into account the 24MB when storing things less than a Gig.

As for monitors, always diagonal, CRT is the tube out of the casing, LCD is the actual screen area as none of it is hidden by the casing anyway.

Telco's say up to 2mb as sometimes the line quality won't be good enough to support the full connection. Also, you'll generally only get the full bandwidth if downloading from a first hop website, most others never get to full bandwidth due to other factors.

Short, sweet and accurate... I appreciate a good clean post Astrofool and this one falls into this category!

Creamy Goodness

astrofool wrote:

Telco's say up to 2mb as sometimes the line quality won't be good enough to support the full connection. Also, you'll generally only get the full bandwidth if downloading from a first hop website, most others never get to full bandwidth due to other factors.

but isn't 2mb = 2 mega bit?

i always thought small b = bit, big B = byte.

it's ok to advertise as "up to 2mb connection" but not "up to 2mB connection".

it's not really false but it's misleading for people who don't know.

astrofool

Yes it it, 2mb effectively equals a max of 256 Kilobytes per second (divide by 8).

Small b means bit, big B means byte.

Usually internal bandwidth measurements are in bits (graphics card memory bandwidth, FSB, network speed etc.) while most area's exposed to the user are in bytes, eg. downloading files, cd/dvd reading & writing speed.

Anyway, as long as things are kept in relative terms, than all you generally need to know is more is better (without going into the intricacies of hardware efficiency, eg. Athlon 64 vs P4 vs Core 2 Duo being measured in clock speed ).

DaSilva

It's not false advertising, it's down too the ambiguity of the kb,mb,gb acronyms.
Generally in computers, when something is 1kb, it is, 1024 bytes. However sometimes, it can also mean 1000 bytes. In standard notation, kila means 1000, in computers it is often measured as 1024.

This is why you are probably starting to see more and more of the, KiB, MiB, GiB notation floating around, as it is allways 1024.

So really your drive is:
465GiB
or in SI units
(465GB or 500GB)

Use, the IEC standard, its clearer.
KiB = Kibibyte = 1024 bytes
MiB = Mebibyte = 1024 KiB
GiB = Gibibyte = 1024 MiB