Hard drive space.

Carlimited

I have always wondered why there is a difference in the advertised hard-drive capacity, compared to the actual hard-drive space. I now understand that this is the way that Windows reports the capacity, in the binary form (I think). Either way, I have figured out that it is not a big conspiracy! However, my question is this: EVEN THOUGH THEY REPORT DIFFERENTLY, IF I BUY A COMPUTER WITH A 320 GB HARD DRIVE, IS THE SPACE ACTUALLY 320 GB, OR IS IT AROUND 290 (AS REPORTED BY WINDOWS). IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THE ACTUAL HARD DISC SPACE IS THE SAME (THE EXAMPLE I FOUND IS SIMILAR TO ONE KILOMETER IS THE SAME AS .6 MILES - SAME DISTANCE, JUST DIFFERENT MEASUREMENT). So, is it the same size?

Gordon

Carlimited wrote:

I have always wondered why there is a difference in the advertised hard-drive capacity, compared to the actual hard-drive space. I now understand that this is the way that Windows reports the capacity, in the binary form (I think). Either way, I have figured out that it is not a big conspiracy! However, my question is this: EVEN THOUGH THEY REPORT DIFFERENTLY, IF I BUY A COMPUTER WITH A 320 GB HARD DRIVE, IS THE SPACE ACTUALLY 320 GB, OR IS IT AROUND 290 (AS REPORTED BY WINDOWS). IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THE ACTUAL HARD DISC SPACE IS THE SAME (THE EXAMPLE I FOUND IS SIMILAR TO ONE KILOMETER IS THE SAME AS .6 MILES - SAME DISTANCE, JUST DIFFERENT MEASUREMENT). So, is it the same size?

It depends if the data inside is in capital letters or not.

hopeful

I reckon you win a prize for most confusing way to ask a simple question.
It seems you answered it yourself...you get what you pay for at the end of the day. All 320gb drives will show the same size in Windows. The drive manufacturers all use the same calculation to state size.

The simple answer to your final question is...Yes.

Now hit the Caps Lock key

extra-ordinary_

Drive manufacturers calculate 1GB as 1000MB, whereas windows calculates 1GB as 1024MB. This still doesn't exactly account for the ~3GB loss on a 40GB HDD, unless their lower calculations - from 1byte up are also out - do the maths, I'm too lazy.

Tivoli

extra-ordinary_ wrote:

Drive manufacturers calculate 1GB as 1000MB, whereas windows calculates 1GB as 1024MB. This still doesn't exactly account for the ~3GB loss on a 40GB HDD, unless their lower calculations - from 1byte up are also out - do the maths, I'm too lazy.

teeheheheh, you got a 40gig hard drive, is it 2001 again already!

Dacelonid

Sorry for hijacking this thread, but it is a related question and I didn't want to start a new thread for it.

I bought a 500Gb external Hard Drive from Komplett recently (Wasn't for me, was for a friend. We just combined orders to save on shipping).
On the box it is stated that 1Gb is 1 Billion bytes. This fits in with what was said earlier in the thread.

My problem is this. Surely this is false advertising. The standard definitions of sizes are

1 Byte

---

8 Bits
1 Kb

---

1024 Bytes (2^10 Bytes)
1Mb

---

1024 Kb (2^20 Bytes)
1Gb

---

1024 Mb (2^30 Bytes)
1Tb

---

1024 Gb (2^40 Bytes)

Doing the math on this 500Gb drive, shows that its actual capacity is roughly 464 GBs. That is a big difference to the 500Gb it is advertised to be.

How is it that Hard Drive manufacturers can say it is 500Gb when it clearly is not.

Also in advertisements, online websites or whatever, should it be stated that a 500GB is actually only 464Gb.

nuada

It all depends on your definition of Gb, generally it will say 1Gb=1000Mb in the small print, space is also lost when blocks are not fully filled. For NTFS I think the standard block size is 4K so if you save say a text file which is only 30 bytes in size it will use 4K of disk space.

BKtje

hardware manufacturers have been doing this for over 15years.
the 1024 kB can now also be said as kiB, MiB, GiB etc to avoid confusion tho the fact that it isnt a standard means that it is still confusing.

You could say that hardware manufacturers use the metric system where k = 1,000 and so forth in which case 1kb would be 1000 bytes which would then be totally accurate.

Creamy Goodness

hard drive manufacturers advertise in the SI prefix - more info here

where as windows reports it as 1024 mega bytes.

it's not false advertising it's just misleading as webstores/bricks and mortar shops are not aware of the differences between small b - bit and big B - byte.