SEAGATE HDD storage size - misleading information

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  scotty on 01/11/2007 - 23:40

  I thought hard disk storage manufacturers have always assume

  1GB = 1,000MB = 1,000,000KB

  You only use the power of 2, i.e.

  1GB = 2^10 MB = 2^20 KB

  If you are a memory manufacturer? You also need to take account that after the raw disk has been formatted with file system, there will be overhead and it is definitely be smaller than advertised.

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    John on 02/11/2007 - 12:18

    Yes, that's what I've always assumed too but apparently Seagate was not doing that so I'm just here to raise the awareness of people buying their product.

    In my experience file system should take only a few % of the capacity and I wouldn't usually notice that.

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  Duke on 02/11/2007 - 15:36

  When referring to RAM sizes and file sizes, it traditionally has a binary definition, of 1024³ bytes

  From wikipediea

  1,073,741,824 bytes, equal to 1024³, or 230 bytes. This is the definition commonly used for computer memory and file sizes. Microsoft uses this definition to display hard drive sizes, as do most other operating systems [3]. Every operating system uses this definition when referring to the size of files by default. By this definition, there are 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte. Since 1999, the IEC recommends that this unit should instead be called a gibibyte (abbreviated GiB).

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  moo on 03/11/2007 - 22:08

  In the US, people tend to sue for anything and everything. A lady sued Apple recently too, as the price of her iPhone dropped considerably approx a month or 2 after she bought it.

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  gshaheen on 09/11/2007 - 16:48

  After formatting, hard drives come down a considerable amount in their capacity. The true size of the hard drive is 250gb, but once formatted, you lose a large amount of the capacity. Formatting it in FAT32 (rather than NTFS) causes a lower loss of space i think…