Seagate Hard Drive Settlement Now Online - Damn!!

[g0dM@n]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=9385

http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/doc-MailIn.htm

But I love Seagate... they've been nice to me... what do you guys have to say about this? :eek:

[UnrealAlex]

Wow so I geuss HD companies are finally being held accountable for advertising like 160GB and actually providing like 150...

[curtis1552]

It's annoying, because most all HDD manufacturers report it that way and people are not educated enough to realize the difference in size.

[g0dM@n]

i've known this for yrs... even Dell has listed somewhere 1gb = 1000 mb and whatnot... or i recall seeing something like that. it is what it is i guess...

Wow so I geuss HD companies are finally being held accountable for advertising like 160GB and actually providing like 150...

if seagate has to pay, and this stuff is for real, then one would think ALL hdd manufacturer's would have to.

nonetheless, i am sure many ppl would like some cash back, but i honestly think this is stupid. if you lack the technical knowledge, then that's not the company's problem. if you don't lack the knowledge, then you already know what you're paying for...

anyway, i gotta sleep. gnite. :)

[petteyg359]

I hope Seagate wins and makes this Cho person pay their legal fees. As the last comment on dailytech says, HD manufacturers have for years put 1GB=1000000000bytes on HD packaging. It's a industry standard, ffs. This is like suing an egg farm in winter because the extra-large eggs aren't extra large at that time of year.

[UnrealAlex]

I must have misunderstood the case, I thought the lawsuit was for advertising more space than the HD actually has?

[Spion]

this lawsuit is stupid. thats all there is to it.

[Fr3@k3r]

you know what, i love free cash but i also love seagate.. So in that fact im not doing any of this for my 12+ seagate drives i have purchased over the past 3 years and I will not screw seagate out of their money.

lets see.. lemme do my math..

9 x ($99x5%) = $4.95 per Drive = $45
1 x ($75x5%) = $3
2 x ($125x5%) = $6.25 = $12.50

so thats around $70 + 12 free software bundles at value of $40 which is $480 ...

i think i did my math right lol

[MadMan007]

This is like the tech version of the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit. Just some schmuck looking for a lawsuit and a settlement. Quite frankly I don't see how they falsley advertised, although it is confusing and should be standardized for a long time drives have said '1MB=1000Bytes' or something similar. What irritates me most is the biggest beneficiary is likely...Pay $1.8 million in attorney’s fees to the plaintiff’s counsel.

Damn lawsuit-happy lawyers and idiot lawsuit-happy ill-informed and ignorant consumers.

[g0dM@n]

Damn lawsuit-happy lawyers and idiot lawsuit-happy ill-informed and ignorant consumers.

That's right... greedy pieces of ____.

Anyway, someone should come out with a mobo or raid card that reads hard drives with the 1000 standard rather than the powers of 2 (1024) standard... then it'll alllll make sense. Their hard drives will gain size back to normal!!

[greyharte]

That's right... greedy pieces of ____.

Anyway, someone should come out with a mobo or raid card that reads hard drives with the 1000 standard rather than the powers of 2 (1024) standard... then it'll alllll make sense. Their hard drives will gain size back to normal!!

not really ... because then they also have to take into account that the partition tables and format take some of that "available space" as well and that's relative to the sz of the drive vs the partition table and format run so now your 160gb drive just became, give or take, an effective 145gb drive and someone will only see the effective available space and call foul at that

once again another frivolous lawsuit ... hope seagate beats it

[neonlazer]

If this is about not having the exact storage that the hard drive is advertized to have...letz sue all the hard drive companies..cause my 2x500 raid has 931gb...i should sue WD then no?..:bday: But i agree in a way...i think 2 500s should add to 1gb not 69gb less than that (O_o)

[g0dM@n]

not really ... because then they also have to take into account that the partition tables and format take some of that "available space" as well and that's relative to the sz of the drive vs the partition table and format run so now your 160gb drive just became, give or take, an effective 145gb drive and someone will only see the effective available space and call foul at that

once again another frivolous lawsuit ... hope seagate beats it

i was just kidding about someone coming out w/a mobo... :)

[msmolt]

If this is about not having the exact storage that the hard drive is advertized to have...letz sue all the hard drive companies..cause my 2x500 raid has 931gb...i should sue WD then no?..:bday: But i agree in a way...i think 2 500s should add to 1gb not 69gb less than that (O_o) not 69 GB less its the 69GB the feds keep track of what you do that cant be seen :D

[Xenocide]

Too bad i don't have any record of how many drives i have purchased.

[petteyg359]

For those of you losers who are actually considering doing this, it's 5% OR the software, not AND. And you can only get the 5% if you purchased your drive during 2005 or earlier.

[aaronjb]

The thing is, Bill Watkins is one of the most stand-up tech CEOs out there. He's refused to sell out to Asian interests despite very good offers, and he's a straight-up, low-key kind of guy.

[MadMan007]

Yea he's good for some funny straight-shooting quotes. One I remember is (paraphrase) "We aren't out to change the world, our products basically help people store more crap."

[thideras]

not really ... because then they also have to take into account that the partition tables and format take some of that "available space" as well and that's relative to the sz of the drive vs the partition table and format run so now your 160gb drive just became, give or take, an effective 145gb drive and someone will only see the effective available space and call foul at that

once again another frivolous lawsuit ... hope seagate beats itI believe you misunderstand that ;)

Your "160gb" drive is 148.8gb actual. You don't lose space by formatting at all, it was 148.8gb to begin with and is 148.8 after formatting.

[Thund3rball]

Phht! There should be a law somewhere that if public opinion is your lawsuit is a joke and the product of a bottom feeding lawyer and plaintiff, you should go to jail AND pay the taxpayers back for all the money and resources you are wasting.

[telexen]

My god, some of you are ridiculous.

It's about time someone try to get truth into HDD size advertising.

This has been no big deal in the past, because who really noticed the loss in their small drives...but now when you buy a 1TB drive advertised you really only get around 930GiB-935GiB...that's a pretty big difference.

It's silly to ask for damages, but I would hope they go the route of making their drives actual size rather than just a disclaimer on a box.

I will turn in my rebates (probably only like $20 anyway, I'm no big Seagate fan)...and not a damn one of you can make me feel guilty for a company's bad practices. I can't believe how much the media has distorted the word "frivolous" to the point that the overwhelming majority of people have NO clue what it actually means.

[g0dM@n]

My god, some of you are ridiculous.
I am POSITIVE that someone will will not like your post. I suggest you take that back. There's no need to call anyone ridiculous here as no one has offended you or anyone else. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

It's silly to ask for damages, but I would hope they go the route of making their drives actual size rather than just a disclaimer on a box.

This I agree with.

...and not a damn one of you can make me feel guilty for a company's bad practices.

This type of response is just asking for trouble. I suggest you reword or rephrase your post in a slight more formal manner. You should know the rules of this forum.

Thank you.

[Thund3rball]

@telexen

Do you have a speedometer in your car? What's the highest speed on it? Do you think your car can go that fast? Are you PO'd enough about it that you're going to waste a **** load of time, money and resources suing ONE car company when all car manufacturers practice the same deceit? Gimme a break. It's a hot coffee lawsuit.

[g0dM@n]

@telexen

Do you have a speedometer in your car? What's the highest speed on it? Do you think your car can go that fast? Are you PO'd enough about it that you're going to waste a **** load of time, money and resources suing ONE car company when all car manufacturers practice the same deceit? Gimme a break. It's a hot coffee lawsuit.

Good analogy.

We need to relax on this subject. It's nothing HUGE when you think about it. Let's not make it political or personal. :)

[petteyg359]

My god, some of you are ridiculous.

It's about time someone try to get truth into HDD size advertising.

This has been no big deal in the past, because who really noticed the loss in their small drives...but now when you buy a 1TB drive advertised you really only get around 930GiB-935GiB...that's a pretty big difference.

It's silly to ask for damages, but I would hope they go the route of making their drives actual size rather than just a disclaimer on a box.

I will turn in my rebates (probably only like $20 anyway, I'm no big Seagate fan)...and not a damn one of you can make me feel guilty for a company's bad practices. I can't believe how much the media has distorted the word "frivolous" to the point that the overwhelming majority of people have NO clue what it actually means.

But this IS frivolous. Tell me, please, the last time you purchased a drive that didn't say 1 Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 Bytes on the package. If you want to sue somebody, sue Microsoft for being the one OS maker who shows only the binary size and not the decimal size.

[djrussell]

while it'd be nice to see 80GB instead of 74.5GB, i'm not about to get tied up in this. it's hardly worth the effort anyway. while i can see the plaintiffs argument, cmon. the disclaimer was there.

[g0dM@n]

while it'd be nice to see 80GB instead of 74.5GB, i'm not about to get tied up in this. it's hardly worth the effort anyway. while i can see the plaintiffs argument, cmon. the disclaimer was there.

Caution: Hot

Every morning I get my coffee from the store, I'm reminded of the idiocy we see these days...

Let me ask for HOT COFFEE and hope that it's not HOT. It's funny, but not funny, but I still laugh at it, in sadness!!

[MadMan007]

It's about time someone try to get truth into HDD size advertising.

I agree with this part of it. Wasn't there a similar case against Western Digital within the last few years as well? But in any case the fact that it is advertised or at least disclaimered on retail packaging should have made this case short-lived. However on my Seagate OEM drive labels it does not say it anywhere it only says '500GBytes' with no further information. However those are OEM drives and technically aren't packaged for individual end-users.

Nah what irritates me about this case is mostly what I said before, the huge winner is the law firm that ran the case and also the fact that bs like this ties up our courts and wastes my tax money.


Oterwise no need for the :mad: tone, we can state our strong feelings and still be :):beer::soda::santa: It is certainly your right to collect and to be honest I would as well if I had qualifying purchases but I'd only get software so I can't be bothered. In the end money is money and while Seagate is pretty good as far as global tech corps go it's still just another big corp and no special friend of mine.

[djrussell]

Caution: Hot

Every morning I get my coffee from the store, I'm reminded of the idiocy we see these days...

Let me ask for HOT COFFEE and hope that it's not HOT. It's funny, but not funny, but I still laugh at it, in sadness!!

did i just get flamed? i can't really tell. :shrug:

anyway, i'm against the lawsuit if that was unclear.

[Fr3@k3r]

Too bad i don't have any record of how many drives i have purchased.

if you can provide proof of purchase they allow u to just use your serial number.

[Spion]

...not a damn one of you can make me feel guilty for a company's bad practices.
lol. i don't see any bad practices here. hard drives have been sold for how long like this? all it takes is a calculator and a little bit of knowledge.

i have a 300GB drive. to find the formatted capacity i just do the following:
(300 * 10^9)/(1024*1024*1024) and that is approx 279.4GB. that's assuming you get EXACTLY 300*10^9 bytes. from looking at the 3 drives in my computer each one actually has more bytes than advertised.

anyways... it just annoys me that someone came up with this lawsuit...

[hafa]

Quote from the Daily Tech Article:

"If Windows starts reporting years as having 255 days, does that mean calendar makers should get sued?"

'Nuff said :D

[g0dM@n]

did i just get flamed? i can't really tell. :shrug:

anyway, i'm against the lawsuit if that was unclear.

Yes, with hot coffee!!! :mad::mad:

Hehe... :D

[petteyg359]

That's some pretty damn hot coffee to set people on fire. You must share this explosive caffeine formula with me...

[Lian Li]

This is my take on the issue

I have a 250gb Seagate HD on my current rig, only 232gb is useable, that's a difference of roughly 7%. Why should I have to eat that? The manufacturer should make the necessary accommodations so when I plug it into my system I can use the 250gb I paid for. Sounds fair to me.

[Lian Li]

Quote from the Daily Tech Article:

"If Windows starts reporting years as having 255 days, does that mean calendar makers should get sued?"

'Nuff said :DStupid analogy

I liken the practices of HD makers advertising a 100gb hd when I can only use 93gb to Toyota advertising to me their new van that can seat 10 adults, yet once the van is formatted and fitted with the equipment needed to seat 10, only 7 will fit due to the way the seats had to be put in. I paid for a vehicle that can seat 10 and that's what I expect it will seat, nothing less.

[petteyg359]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp.

Apologies in advance for whomever lacks wits and is offended by this.

[thideras]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp.

Apologies in advance for whomever lacks wits and is offended by this.I completely agree with what you said, but you could have been a little nicer in saying ;)

Guys you aren't "losing" space at all, you are looking at it incorrectly, your comparing 1000mb to 1024mb....1000 != 1024.

And everyone keeps saying "my formatted space is x". No. That is what your space is assuming 1024mb per gb.

It is just a marketing "twist" if you will, it isn't false advertising at all. It says right on the box that 1000mb per gb, which is how they rate the size of the drive. It should be labled as 1024, but they don't.

[g0dM@n]

That's some pretty damn hot coffee to set people on fire. You must share this explosive caffeine formula with me...
LOL... I said that cuz I didn't recall flaming djrussel... I don't even recall directing anything at all to him or of what he said... so I figured he was messin' with me, which transforms me into "WTF g0dM@n"... well, not really, but it's getting late and I need sleep... none of this makes sense to you - that is the goal!! :)
I completely agree with what you said, but you could have been a little nicer in saying ;)

Guys you aren't "losing" space at all, you are looking at it incorrectly, your comparing 1000mb to 1024mb....1000 != 1024.

And everyone keeps saying "my formatted space is x". No. That is what your space is assuming 1024mb per gb.

I completely agree with what you said, but you could have been a little meaner in saying ;)

[MadMan007]

WTF g@dman?!

[imposter]

Hmm. This is interesting. Perhaps if anyone cares ill publish it in my schools news paper. Anyone going to claim any money? Whats in the software that makes it retail at 40 bucks.

[UnrealAlex]

In my opinion, relatively very few people are as knowledgeable about these matters as you guys are. Your regular family man Joe needs to buy a 120GB hard drive, he goes and buys one that's marked to have 120GB. He plugs it in and finds out that he's missing close to 10GB of space. In my opinion, the hard drive companies should advertise how much space you actually get to use. But I don't think it's that big of a deal.

[petteyg359]

UnrealAlex, may I direct you to my post up a few. He DID get 120GB. Windows just isn't showing it properly. Hard drives were made this way before Windows ever existed. I could say all the blame lies with Microsoft, but that'd be just as stupid as saying all the blame lies with Seagate, or any other manufacturer. The blame, in truth, lies with the American non-educational system that doesn't teach people simple stuff like the difference between binary and decimal. I have a 540MB hard drive from a 386. Guess how the drive is sized? KB = 1000B, MB = 1000KB. Yup, it's decimal.

thideras: When people get unreasonably upset over something little like this, they don't listen to you when you're nice and polite :shrug:

[Spion]

This is my take on the issue

I have a 250gb Seagate HD on my current rig, only 232gb is useable, that's a difference of roughly 7%. Why should I have to eat that? The manufacturer should make the necessary accommodations so when I plug it into my system I can use the 250gb I paid for. Sounds fair to me.

(250*10^9)/(1024^3)=232.8

looks like you're not losing any of your hard drive space to me.

[petteyg359]

How about I say it this way. You are paying for 250 trillion bytes. Windows shows things in binary (multiples of 1024). So Windows will claim you only have 232.8GB. However, if you look at the total capacity in the properties page, it will give it to you in bytes. Guess what? You have 250 trillion bytes capacity! In fact, you likely have more bytes than you paid for. My 160GB drive has 160,031,014,912. I got 31 million free bonus bytes.

Oh yeah, by the way, I was thinking about suing Intel for losing somewhere around a half terabyte (OMG!) on my RAID5.

[Spion]

^ exactly. you are getting told how many bytes you have its just that the number of GB are in base 10 instead of base 2 when you are shopping for a hard drive.

[g0dM@n]

So who decides which is the correct way to interpret??

Which one is the RIGHT ONE, decimal or binary??

How can anyone decide who is RIGHT, and then BLAME the other for being wrong?? In my opinion, you can't... only b/c BOTH methods have become standards, depending on how you look at it.

They should assess the situation, FIX the damn thing, and screw the freaking lawsuits... some people are just so darn greedy!!! If Seagate was a junk company I could understand, but they're a GREAT company with quality products, great customer service, and has one of the best warranties.

What other company offers 5 yrs STANDARD on all of their hard drives? The only other company that I see do that is Western Digital, and that's ONLY on the raptor series...

[djrussell]

LOL... I said that cuz I didn't recall flaming djrussel... I don't even recall directing anything at all to him or of what he said... so I figured he was messin' with me, which transforms me into "WTF g0dM@n"... well, not really, but it's getting late and I need sleep... none of this makes sense to you - that is the goal!! :)

post #27.

you quoted me and then seemingly unrelatedly went on about HOT coffee and all. huh??? you want me to spill hot coffee on myself? you want to spill it on me? did i get flamed? oh well. no burn no foul.:beer:

on a side note, it's very possible i could get flamed by some hot coffee. i live in everett (ie seattle) and my wife just stopped working for a coffee roaster/distributor.

[g0dM@n]

post #27.

you quoted me and then seemingly unrelatedly went on about HOT coffee and all. huh??? you want me to spill hot coffee on myself? you want to spill it on me? did i get flamed? oh well. no burn no foul.:beer:

on a side note, it's very possible i could get flamed by some hot coffee. i live in everett (ie seattle) and my wife just stopped working for a coffee roaster/distributor.

lol... i was just extending on what you were saying, and then made a stupid analogy. :)

[hotrod469]

I think this happend to WD a few years back, I will see if I can find something on it.
EDIT* http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060630-7174.html (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060630-7174.html)

[Shell]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp. QUOTE OF TRUTH IN EPIC PERPORTIONS

[knucklehead]

Yea he's good for some funny straight-shooting quotes. One I remember is (paraphrase) "We aren't out to change the world, our products basically help people store more crap."

"And watch porn."

Bill Watkins, His words.

[MadMan007]

I think this happend to WD a few years back, I will see if I can find something on it.
EDIT* http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060630-7174.html (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060630-7174.html)

Seagate and others should have learned from that lawsuit then, I'm not sure when the Seagate one was started though. WD didn't have to give cash settlements though just some cheese software.

[hotrod469]

Seagate and others should have learned from that lawsuit then, I'm not sure when the Seagate one was started though. WD didn't have to give cash settlements though just some cheese software.

You would think outher HD companies would have learned, they should pay me the big bucks to tell them stuff like that.

[Trottel]

Oh man, that form only has info for 1 drive, yet I have bought 6 expensive hard drives from seagate from 2003 to 2005. I still have them all too. If I can send out 6 forms for my drives, that will be a nice bonus!

I agree that this is very stupid though. It reminds me of something else. Porsche was sued for not having traction control in their Carrera GT. Someone crashed one and the wife sued. Idiots just like in this situation.

EDIT: GRR. How am I supposed to know where, what date, and how much I paid for each drive?

[petteyg359]

By having some form of proof of purchase. Please don't go on saying this is stupid and for idiots and then be a hypocrite and try to participate in it.

[g0dM@n]

By having some form of proof of purchase. Please don't go on saying this is stupid and for idiots and then be a hypocrite and try to participate in it.

I agree... if this whole thing is stupid, I don't think it makes sense to take Seagate's money.... or vice versa. :)

[Lian Li]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp.

Apologies in advance for whomever lacks wits and is offended by this.The person telling me to grow up is the person yelling and cussing and taking subliminal at me for the simple fact that I am of a differing opinion than he, interesting.

In any case, since you in all your wisdom know about MS showing the capacity in binary, surely Seagate knows this and can make the necessary change to their hardware so when we plug it in it shows the capacity we paid for and without us having to do an algebraic equation to confirm it. Very simply solution indeed.


Guys you aren't "losing" space at all, you are looking at it incorrectly, your comparing 1000mb to 1024mb....1000 != 1024.
OK.......I have a 250gb hd, I have 10 25gb files on my computer, my computer shows 232 gb of useable space, that being said I should be able to save all 10 of those 25gb files to said hd with no problem, correct? I have a feeling only 9 will be able to be saved to it since MS is showing only 232 gb of free space. Which means I am infact losing space. Unless you can show me that you can infact store 250gb of files onto a drive that shows only 232 is available.

In my opinion, relatively very few people are as knowledgeable about these matters as you guys are. Your regular family man Joe needs to buy a 120GB hard drive, he goes and buys one that's marked to have 120GB. He plugs it in and finds out that he's missing close to 10GB of space. In my opinion, the hard drive companies should advertise how much space you actually get to use. Agreed 100%

UnrealAlex, may I direct you to my post up a few. He DID get 120GB. Windows just isn't showing it properly. Hard drives were made this way before Windows ever existed. I could say all the blame lies with Microsoft, but that'd be just as stupid as saying all the blame lies with Seagate, or any other manufacturer. The blame, in truth, lies with the American non-educational system that doesn't teach people simple stuff like the difference between binary and decimal. I have a 540MB hard drive from a 386. Guess how the drive is sized? KB = 1000B, MB = 1000KB. Yup, it's decimal.

thideras: When people get unreasonably upset over something little like this, they don't listen to you when you're nice and polite :shrug:So if 232gb = 250gb, I will be able to store 250gb of files on that drive that windows shows only has 232gb avail? I find that hard to believe.

Being that thideras' comment about being nicer was in response to your comment to me, your comment in this post above is taken like it's aimed at me. I was not unreasonably upset about anything so you might want to get down off your high horse.

(250*10^9)/(1024^3)=232.8

looks like you're not losing any of your hard drive space to me.I am if I can't store 250gb of files onto that drive. Can you prove to me that can be done?

[jstutman]

Ok here is the deal.

The seagate classaction lawsuit was filed by the SAME person who did the Western Digital class action.

The total estimated cost of the WD lawsuit was $30,500,000. There were an estimated 1 million customers affected which were entitled to a $30 software. They also agreed to pay a $500,000 fee/expense to the lawyers.

Cho is a little more greedier with Seagate, with a proposed attorney fee/expense of $1,792,000

[petteyg359]

The person telling me to grow up is the person yelling and cussing and taking subliminal at me for the simple fact that I am of a differing opinion than he, interesting.
Quite funny. Where'd I cuss? Where'd I "take subliminal" (whatever that means)? And AFAIK I'm not stating an opinion, I'm stating a fact.

In any case, since you in all your wisdom know about MS showing the capacity in binary, surely Seagate knows this and can make the necessary change to their hardware so when we plug it in it shows the capacity we paid for and without us having to do an algebraic equation to confirm it. Very simply solution indeed.
Multiplying by 1000^3 and dividing by 1024^3 is hardly algebraic. Why should Seagate change their hardware so it lies to the software? Your 250GB drive tells your OS you have 250 trillion bytes.

OK.......I have a 250gb hd, I have 10 25gb files on my computer, my computer shows 232 gb of useable space, that being said I should be able to save all 10 of those 25gb files to said hd with no problem, correct? I have a feeling only 9 will be able to be saved to it since MS is showing only 232 gb of free space. Which means I am infact losing space. Unless you can show me that you can infact store 250gb of files onto a drive that shows only 232 is available.

A 25GB file should be 25 trillion bytes if you're comparing them that way. In which case 10 of them will fit on the drive. You really need to quit arguing that 1024 = 1000, because it doesn't, and it never will. MS is again showing 232.8GB of BINARY space. And saying the drive is 250GB in decimal is correct. For it to be in binary, the unit size would be 250GiB. The i signifies a binary unit. Why Windows chooses to totally ignore this standard I don't know.

By the way, if you're going to be arguing about sizes, please properly capitalize your units. K=Kilo, M=Mega, G=Giga, T=Tera, b=bit, B=Byte. If you didn't know them, now you do, please use them in the future.

In January 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission introduced the prefixes kibi-(Kibibyte), mebi-, gibi-, etc., and the symbols Ki, Mi, Gi, etc. to specify binary multiples of a quantity and eliminate this ambiguity.[16] The names for the new standard are derived from the first two letters of the original SI prefixes followed by bi, short for "binary". The new standard also clarifies that, from the point of view of the IEC, the SI prefixes will henceforth only have their base-10 meaning and never have a base-2 meaning.

I do believe XP came out after 1999. SP2 definitely did. This should have been fixed by them, not ignored. Might be going a bit off topic, but Microsoft is in an excellent position to make the general public that uses computers a tiny bit more tech-literate. Instead, they use incorrect units and cause lawsuits like this.

So if 232gb = 250gb, I will be able to store 250gb of files on that drive that windows shows only has 232gb avail? I find that hard to believe.

No, again. Windows should be stating 232GiB, not GB. You will be able to store 250GB of files (not really, because MFT and half-used clusters take some space), just not 250GiB. 250GiB is in binary, therefore larger.

Being that thideras' comment about being nicer was in response to your comment to me, your comment in this post above is taken like it's aimed at me. I was not unreasonably upset about anything so you might want to get down off your high horse.

I am if I can't store 250gb of files onto that drive. Can you prove to me that can be done?

Sorry, but I'm trying to prove a simple point here. Seagate is advertising in GB. They are selling GB. Not GiB. Windows is lying to you and claiming that GB are GiB. They are not, and the IEC standard saying so has existed since 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix). My earlier post was directed at everyone arguing that they didn't get 250GB, not just you.

You like won't manage to store a full 250GB of discrete files on the drive, as the file system (MFT etc.) takes up some space itself, and if your files don't line up exactly on cluster boundaries you'll have a bit of wasted space. Again, that isn't Seagate's fault. I highly doubt anyone will ever come up with a filesystem that leaves every bit of space available. Of course you could put the whole drive into a solid archive, and then at least there wouldn't be wasted clusters, but still the MFT and such would take up space.

Hopefully this will educate some people... The only company that should be sued is Microsoft, for being the root cause of these lawsuits against hard drive makers.

[Mr.Guvernment]

I must have misunderstood the case, I thought the lawsuit was for advertising more space than the HD actually has?


Depending on who listen to, it could be this way, but bottom line is all HD makers use this method, it is software that uses other methods

So how long till someone sue's MS....

[petteyg359]

Maybe we should advise Seagate and WD to sue M$ for misrepresenting HD size. Hmm... Could get NASA to sue M$ if they use Windows... NASA always needs things in the correct units...

[Shell]

I have a load of Seagate HDDs and I'm not going to take a penny from the best computer parts compant I know.
I wish someone would sue nVidia or at least one of their OEMs for making a load of video cards fry from overheating and poor QQ. I've had lots of angry people that put the blame on the retailer and what do we do? Blame nVidia's OEMs? Blame nVidia?

Hot Coffee anyone?

[Lian Li]

Quite funny. Where'd I cuss?EFFING=F*CKING Correct?

Where'd I "take subliminal shots" (whatever that means)? And AFAIK I'm not stating an opinion, I'm stating a fact.You're taking subliminal shots at me by saying things about me without specifying that it's me you're talking about. Your "fact" is obviously your opinion considering the FACT that in both the WD case and now with the Seagate case, both companies were penalized for this practice.


[QUOTE=petteyg359;5310293]Multiplying by 1000^3 and dividing by 1024^3 is hardly algebraic. Why should Seagate change their hardware so it lies to the software? Your 250GB drive tells your OS you have 250 trillion bytes.algebraic equation - statement of the equality of two expressions formulated by applying to a set of variables the algebraic operations, namely, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, raising to a power, and extraction of a root.

Still say it's not algebraic?

By the way, if you're going to be arguing about sizes, please properly capitalize your units. K=Kilo, M=Mega, G=Giga, T=Tera, b=bit, B=Byte. If you didn't know them, now you do, please use them in the future.Hold your breath, I'll get right on it.

Seagate is advertising in GB. They are selling GB. Not GiB. Windows is lying to you and claiming that GB are GiB.Can't argue with that point. Looking at it from that perspective I can see that this situation is very similar to the widespread use of the term "gel cell" battery in reference to sealed lead acid batteries. It's simply misuse of a term, or in this case, a measurement.

[petteyg359]

How nice of you to edit that quote (it was "taking subliminal", word "shots" was not in your post nor mine). There's no variables in the math other than drive size, so saying that it's hideously complicated just won't cut it. The way you put it, I interpreted it as meaning complicated. You may interpret effing as cussing, however I don't. That is a valid difference of opinion where I won't argue either way is a fact.

[jstutman]

Wow, just wow. Lets keep the post on topic and stop your bickering. This obviously shows you why the lawsuit is there, you all cant even agree to the proper answer.

[DvBoard]

But this IS frivolous. Tell me, please, the last time you purchased a drive that didn't say 1 Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 Bytes on the package. If you want to sue somebody, sue Microsoft for being the one OS maker who shows only the binary size and not the decimal size.

The harddrive makers knew when they made the drive that it would take 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. and they chose to ignore it and instead purposely mis-lead people by using another system.

I'd like to see the result of this case make all harddrive manufactues convert to the number system that is followed on which the product is used. Aka 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. nothing more.

[Evilsizer]

The harddrive makers knew when they made the drive that it would take 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. and they chose to ignore it and instead purposely mis-lead people by using another system.

I'd like to see the result of this case make all harddrive manufactues convert to the number system that is followed on which the product is used. Aka 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. nothing more.

Then linux should conform to MS standards then? I dought that will ever happen.

[petteyg359]

DvBoard: Please explain your statement. Hard drives have been around before Windows ever was. How about you change that and say "Microsoft knew when they wrote Windows that drives were advertised, manufactured, and sold in decimal units and they chose to ignore it and instead purposely misled people by using another system." It'd at least be a bit more accurate. The "purposely" can be left out, I think. IBM themselves couldn't decide whether binary or decimal was better. Second, converting away from a standard is outright stupid. The standard is there to PREVENT confusion be seperating the units. Again, blame M$ for showing the wrong unit. I don't know about MacOS or OSX, but I know my Linux install shows proper units. Anyways, adapt the software to the hardware, not the other way around, or you just start making things more and more complicated all around. Are hardware makers really supposed to change how they do things every time M$ has a bug?

[Lian Li]

The harddrive makers knew when they made the drive that it would take 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. and they chose to ignore it and instead purposely mis-lead people by using another system.

I'd like to see the result of this case make all harddrive manufactues convert to the number system that is followed on which the product is used. Aka 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. nothing more.Amen!

I think all HDD makers should do like Monitor makers do, ex: 19" Monitor (17.4" viewable), that way they protect themselves from lawsuits like this and the average joe doesn't need to get a degree in computer science to know why his 500gb hd is only showing up as 465gb when they hook it up. Easiest solution to the problem AFAIC.

Then linux should conform to MS standards then? I dought that will ever happen.Linux isn't built to be used with and/or work on a MS platform is it? Then you're not comparing apples to apples.

[David]

Stop bickering. It's only a discussion on an internet forum. Please just grow up. -- David

Secondly, it's a matter of convention, not a 'loss' anywhere.

Seagate say their 500GB hard disk is 500GB where 1GB = 1000MB which is the way it's done because it's been convention since forever.

Windows reports 500GB where 1GB = 1024MB.

At the end of the day if you buy a hard disk it says on it how much 1GB is. If you buy a 500GB HDD from Seagate you get the same space as a 500GB from WD or a 500GB from anyone else.

1GB IS 1000MB or 1024Mb but "to address this confusion, currently all relevant standards bodies promote the use of the term "gibibyte" for the binary definition."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

1GiB is 1024MB. Hence the hard disk companies are in the right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiB

[MooMasster716]

I think operating systems should allow you to choose the measurement system you want when you install an OS. I personally like to measure my height in hamsters and would appreciate it if MS word allowed me to format my documents in hamster X elephant units. It would be a whole lot easier to patch an OS than change physical drives right?

Also, as mentioned above Microsoft allows you to right click properties on a HD and view the size in bytes below the pie chart right? I can't see how HD manufactures lose their cases because it states the difference between GB and GiB right on the boxes. Back when I worked at Circuit City a customer came in and asked why he wasn't getting the full 160GB of storage to which I referenced the sticker in front of the drive bay and to back of the retail HD boxes.

Hell it seems like just about every company has rely on small fine print, why have the HD manufactures failed? Ill have to ask my Business Law professor to look at this.

[Lian Li]

At the end of the day if you buy a hard disk it says on it how much 1GB is. If you buy a 500GB HDD from Seagate you get the same space as a 500GB from WD or a 500GB from anyone else.That's not the issue, it's that when we buy a 500gb hdd, it shows only 465gb as available once we get it hooked up. This has been done forever, very true, but with the volume on HDD's of today, it's incredibly more noticeable so that's why people are making such a big deal about it.

[Evilsizer]

That's not the issue, it's that when we buy a 500gb hdd, it shows only 465gb as available once we get it hooked up. This has been done forever, very true, but with the volume on HDD's of today, it's incredibly more noticeable so that's why people are making such a big deal about it.

hmm and its only MS windows that does this, linux doesnt that was my point. cant say im comparing apples to oranges then... 2 ways of counting HD size, cant call MS correct on thier way, thats the point of peoples post here.

[David]

That's not the issue, it's that when we buy a 500gb hdd, it shows only 465gb as available once we get it hooked up. This has been done forever, very true, but with the volume on HDD's of today, it's incredibly more noticeable so that's why people are making such a big deal about it.

Convention is that 1GB 1,000,000,000 bytes and that 1GiB is 10244 bytes. 500GB = 465GiB.

Also:

rm-001-31 david # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 72G 5.0G 63G 8% /
udev 220M 600K 219M 1% /dev
shm 220M 0 220M 0% /dev/shm
rm-001-31 david # df -H
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 77G 5.4G 68G 8% /
udev 231M 615k 230M 1% /dev
shm 231M 0 231M 0% /dev/shm


Linux will display disk usage in GiB or GB.

[petteyg359]

David++

MooMasster716: What made you pick hamsters over gerbils? I've always preffered guinea pigs x anteaters, myself.

[MadMan007]

Amen!

I think all HDD makers should do like Monitor makers do, ex: 19" Monitor (17.4" viewable), that way they protect themselves from lawsuits like this and the average joe doesn't need to get a degree in computer science to know why his 500gb hd is only showing up as 465gb when they hook it up. Easiest solution to the problem AFAIC.

Retail box drives which are the only drives packaged and intended for use by individual end-users do state the unit descrepancy albeit in fine print. End users are not supposed to be buying 'OEM' drives regardless of the fact that they are readily available so whethre an OEM drive says it or not does not matter. So HD makers do in fact provide the information to end-users, it's the end users who are at fault for either not understanding information provided or maybe ignoring it altogether.

[bing]

Me and myself only !

My logic and the reasoning are telling me "Yes" ! ... firmly ...
My greed is telling me "YEESSSS !!" ...loud & clear ...

..but ...

My conscience is whispering me "no" ... and I do follow it ! :)

[Lian Li]

hmm and its only MS windows that does this, linux doesnt that was my point. cant say im comparing apples to oranges then... 2 ways of counting HD size, cant call MS correct on thier way, thats the point of peoples post here.No sir, it's not only MS, Macs do this as well, and between Mac's and Windows machines what market share would you say that covers? I'd guess upwards of 99%, see where i'm going with this?

I just think the HDD makers need to flaunt the binary value of their product just as much as they flaunt the decimal value so the average customer isn't made to feel like they are missing out on something when they really aren't, I believe that's what this boils down to. By only showing the decimal value, they are leading the custom to believe that's the capacity they will "see" when the drive is hooked up, when that number doesn't match we end up where we are today.

MS surely could add something to their OS so it shows the decimal value, and HDD makers surely could clearly state 160gb/152gb reported on their packaging, with neither incurring significant or otherwise harmful costs or side effects due to it and we could all move on and worry about more important things in life.

[David]

No sir, it's not only MS, Macs do this as well, and between Mac's and Windows machines what market share would you say that covers? I'd guess upwards of 99%, see where i'm going with this?

I just think the HDD makers need to flaunt the binary value of their product just as much as they flaunt the decimal value so the average customer isn't made to feel like they are missing out on something when they really aren't, I believe that's what this boils down to. By only showing the decimal value, they are leading the custom to believe that's the capacity they will "see" when the drive is hooked up, when that number doesn't match we end up where we are today.

MS surely could add something to their OS so it shows the decimal value, and HDD makers surely could clearly state 160gb/152gb reported on their packaging, with neither incurring significant or otherwise harmful costs or side effects due to it and we could all move on and worry about more important things in life.

Wouldn't be a bad idea to have them state 500GB/465GiB on packaging. But then you'd just confuse a lot of people.

It's definately a frivolous lawsuit.

[Lian Li]

Wouldn't be a bad idea to have them state 500GB/465GiB on packaging. But then you'd just confuse a lot of people.
Yeah, I guess it's not confusing when you buy a 500gb hd and then get home and see your computer only "recognizes" 465gbhttp://www.abfnet.com/forum/images/smilies/blink.gif

[David]

Yeah, I guess it's not confusing when you buy a 500gb hd and then get home and see your computer only "recognizes" 465gbhttp://www.abfnet.com/forum/images/smilies/blink.gif

No, it's 465GiB. I'm just repeating myself now.

Bottom line: it's always been that way. Anyone who buys a hard disk should be fully aware that thats the case. Seagate aren't ripping you off any more than any other company - it's a matter of convention amongst hard disk manufacturers.

You did not buy a 500GiB hard disk, you bought a 500GB hard disk. That's the bottom line.

[MadMan007]

It's more of matter of how you want to view the marketing practices and not a technical argument. Is it deceptive to the point of being due for damages when there is a 'fine print' disclaimer? Or is that just the consumer being lazy and ill-informed? Should PC OEMs like Dell be liable for this as well? I think everyone here perfectly understands it can be confusing and maybe even misleading (but heck how many kinds of marketing for electronics aren't that way?) but to the point of being liable for damages when the information IS printed on the product box, I say no.

This actually extends to a lot more devices too, pretty much anything with memory honestly. An MP3 player for example that has '8GB' but that's in decimal not binary.

[MooMasster716]

MooMasster716: What made you pick hamsters over gerbils? I've always preffered guinea pigs x anteaters, myself.
I've never owned a gerbil but you have a point on the guinea pigs, the few that I have owned have had way more Baditude than any of the hamsters I've ever owned.

[MooMasster716]

MS surely could add something to their OS so it shows the decimal value,

Already done

Also, as mentioned above Microsoft allows you to right click properties on a HD and view the size in bytes below the pie chart right?

You did not buy a 500GiB hard disk, you bought a 500GB hard disk. That's the bottom line.[/b]
Thats the Bottom line.

[DvBoard]

Bottom line: it's always been that way. Anyone who buys a hard disk should be fully aware that thats the case. Seagate aren't ripping you off any more than any other company - it's a matter of convention amongst hard disk manufacturers.Should and are aren't the same. I know when i bought my first 20GB disk i didn't know the difference.

ALL Hard drive manufactures should change or face similar lawsuits. 500GB/465GiB is alot easier to understand than 500GB's on the package and 465GiB's on the computer with no connection between the two.

[petteyg359]

DvBoard: M$ doesn't say GiB. M$ says GB. M$ is the one providing false information. That's all there is to it. The hard drive companies are misleading nobody. M$ (and probably Apple) are misleading everyone who doesn't know better. And by this point in this thread, everybody reading it should damn well know better by now.

[g0dM@n]

Wouldn't be a bad idea to have them state 500GB/465GiB on packaging. But then you'd just confuse a lot of people.

Well, maybe they should put that on the label and then write (base 2) and (base 10) or something next to them accordingly, and then in the little slip/manual it will explain them...

[DvBoard]

DvBoard: M$ doesn't say GiB. M$ says GB. M$ is the one providing false information. That's all there is to it. The hard drive companies are misleading nobody. M$ (and probably Apple) are misleading everyone who doesn't know better. And by this point in this thread, everybody reading it should damn well know better by now.

That fact that the two are not consistant is the problem. the solution is to adjust one. adjusting windows would effect a whole lot more than just the packaging. easiest solution? adjust the packaging. As long as it's done across all harddrive vendors where is the downside?

[Mpegger]

That fact that the two are not consistant is the problem. the solution is to adjust one. adjusting windows would effect a whole lot more than just the packaging. easiest solution? adjust the packaging. As long as it's done across all harddrive vendors where is the downside?

The downside would be in thier (hd manufacturers) sales.

Buyer 1: "Ohs noes! WD only has 488GB drives! I'm getting the Hitachi 500GiB for the same price!"

Tech savvy friend of Buyer 1: "Dude. Its the same size hard drive. Go with the WD."

Buyer 1: "No way man. This one says 500 and that one says 488. I need the extra space."

Tech savvy ex-friend of Buyer 1: "Dude, your an idiot."

Its just the same coffee fiasco all over again. Just because McD didnt have "Hot Coffee" on thier cups, they lost the case. So now, they and so many others print "Hot Coffee" on the cup just to keep the idiots at bay. Ever look at hammers and thier warning stickers? Wonder why they even have to warn people not to use it as a toy and not to hit others over the head with it?

[Evilsizer]

That fact that the two are not consistant is the, problem. the solution is to adjust one. adjusting windows would effect a whole lot more than just the packaging. easiest solution? adjust the packaging. As long as it's done across all harddrive vendors where is the downside?

if its about all vendors doing the same thing then why is it only seagate? why not WD,Samsung,Fujitshu,Maxtor all at the same time? the downside, people think they changed something when they changed nothing.

so i downloaded Crysis demo and on the site they say its 1.77GB. It shows 1.77GB in the status bar of windows. yet on the file properties it show 1,902,022,656 bytes.... i better sue EA,the hosters, and any one else cause OMG ITS NOT 1.77GB

[Lian Li]

No, it's 465GiB. I'm just repeating myself now.

You did not buy a 500GiB hard disk, you bought a 500GB hard disk. That's the bottom line.You just helped me prove my point, thanks:beer:

The average user has no clue the difference between GiB and GB so let's just keep it simple and instead of throwing more suffixes at us, just show us the two numbers we pay attention to, the capacity of the drive we just bought and the capacity MS is going to tell us we have.

Should and are aren't the same. I know when i bought my first 20GB disk i didn't know the difference.

ALL Hard drive manufactures should change or face similar lawsuits. 500GB/465GiB is alot easier to understand than 500GB's on the package and 465GiB's on the computer with no connection between the two.I couldn't agree more.

DvBoard: M$ doesn't say GiB. M$ says GB. M$ is the one providing false information. That's all there is to it. The hard drive companies are misleading nobody. M$ (and probably Apple) are misleading everyone who doesn't know better. And by this point in this thread, everybody reading it should damn well know better by now.True story. I'd love to hear MS's explanation of that.

The downside would be in thier (hd manufacturers) sales.

Buyer 1: "Ohs noes! WD only has 488GB drives! I'm getting the Hitachi 500GiB for the same price!"

Tech savvy friend of Buyer 1: "Dude. Its the same size hard drive. Go with the WD."

Buyer 1: "No way man. This one says 500 and that one says 488. I need the extra space."

Tech savvy ex-friend of Buyer 1: "Dude, your an idiot."
http://www.abfnet.com/forum/images/smilies/verystrange.gif

if its about all vendors doing the same thing then why is it only seagate? why not WD,Samsung,Fujitshu,Maxtor all at the same time?

so i downloaded Crysis demo and on the site they say its 1.77GB. It shows 1.77GB in the status bar of windows. yet on the file properties it show 1,902,022,656 bytes.... i better sue EA,the hosters, and any one else cause OMG ITS NOT 1.77GBAgreed on comment #1

As for comment #2, did you pay for the demo you downloaded? Nuff said

[DvBoard]

The downside would be in thier (hd manufacturers) sales.

Buyer 1: "Ohs noes! WD only has 488GB drives! I'm getting the Hitachi 500GiB for the same price!"

Tech savvy friend of Buyer 1: "Dude. Its the same size hard drive. Go with the WD."

Buyer 1: "No way man. This one says 500 and that one says 488. I need the extra space."

Tech savvy ex-friend of Buyer 1: "Dude, your an idiot."

Its just the same coffee fiasco all over again. Just because McD didnt have "Hot Coffee" on thier cups, they lost the case. So now, they and so many others print "Hot Coffee" on the cup just to keep the idiots at bay. Ever look at hammers and thier warning stickers? Wonder why they even have to warn people not to use it as a toy and not to hit others over the head with it? This isn't something like is the coffee hot. This is a case of two easily confusable terms being used such that people don't get what they believe they should.

This would be like McDonalds saying thier coffee was served at 100 degrees (and using C), so someone drinks it thinking it's 100 degrees F since that's the normally used unit (at least inside the US).

and i said all HDD manufactures at once, so your story doesn't apply.

[petteyg359]

So when I purchase a ton of bricks over the phone, and they give me a metric tonne instead, I should sue the brick company? Same easily confusable terms there. Metric vs non-metric isn't far different from metric vs binary.

[DvBoard]

So when I purchase a ton of bricks over the phone, and they give me a metric tonne instead, I should sue the brick company? Same easily confusable terms there. Metric vs non-metric isn't far different from metric vs binary.

When was the last time you've purchased a Metric Ton of bricks? Seriously if you don't get what you think you should and the company won't do anything about it, then you do something to force them to do something about it.

[petteyg359]

It doesn't matter whether you got what you think you should've gotten. If the company sells it in tonnes, and you've only heard it, not seen it in print, it's your fault for not looking it up. Same for GB. If it's sold in GB, and you don't know the difference and have never looked it up, IT IS YOUR FAULT. The manufacturer is most definitely NOT responsible for your [lack of] education.

[DvBoard]

It doesn't matter whether you got what you think you should've gotten. If the company sells it in tonnes, and you've only heard it, not seen it in print, it's your fault for not looking it up. Same for GB. If it's sold in GB, and you don't know the difference and have never looked it up, IT IS YOUR FAULT. The manufacturer is most definitely NOT responsible for your [lack of] education.

Obviously that's not the case as they lost this case. They have purposely mis-represented their drive to the general public no matter what you say. That's why people get money back in this case. They lost.

They knew that on prbly 95% of items that their hardware was being used on it would be mis-represented, yet they continued, and still do, to go with another convention purely for marketing purposes. Otherwise there would be no reason for them to do so.

[petteyg359]

As far as I'm aware, they haven't lost yet. This is for a proposed settlement that isn't even official yet.

Read: http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/notice.htm

[Mpegger]

Obviously that's not the case as they lost this case. They have purposely mis-represented their drive to the general public no matter what you say. That's why people get money back in this case. They lost.

They knew that on prbly 95% of items that their hardware was being used on it would be mis-represented, yet they continued, and still do, to go with another convention purely for marketing purposes. Otherwise there would be no reason for them to do so.

And so far, many have pointed out that they have not mis-represented thier drives at all. Its simply the OS that reports a different value because its using a different method to show the value. You are still getting the same amount of space the hard drive manufacturer claims. Is it the hd manufacturers fault the OS you choose to use reports it as something different? Is it the hd manufacturers fault the end-user expects one thing because of thier OS's way of reporting values, but gets something else? Is it the hd manufacturers fault that the end-user is not smart enough to distinguish between different values (like so many still to this day dont know the difference between kb and KB)?

No, the manufacturer didnt mis-represent anything. Its the idiot(s) bringing fourth lawsuits that simply want to blame others for thier own ignorance, like in so many other frivolous lawsuits, who are to blame.

[maxfly]

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9045141&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top
seems its true,they have settled.so how long before the rest of the hdd manufacturers get hit?

[g0dM@n]

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9045141&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top
seems its true,they have settled.so how long before the rest of the hdd manufacturers get hit?

Un-freakin-believable that only Seagate is targeted... I guess they go through them one-by-one? This is idiotic...

[maelstromracing]

I agree with the lawsuit. The Hard Drive manufactors have twisted the definition of bytes. It has always been binary (look at your ram... 512? =512MB, not 500MB. 1024MB -1 GB) See that analogy. That is how it is to be measure, BINARY. The hard drive manufactors in their race to produce the largest drive changed what they call bytes. Imagine going to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk and getting only 3 quarts because the dairy industry decided to change what they call a gallon. Bytes in Binary IS Industry standard.

[scoobydoo]

this thread has depressed me, i looked up old newegg orders and noticed i paid $200 for a 120gb hard drive.

[petteyg359]

I agree with the lawsuit. The Hard Drive manufactors have twisted the definition of bytes. It has always been binary (look at your ram... 512? =512MB, not 500MB. 1024MB -1 GB) See that analogy. That is how it is to be measure, BINARY. The hard drive manufactors in their race to produce the largest drive changed what they call bytes. Imagine going to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk and getting only 3 quarts because the dairy industry decided to change what they call a gallon. Bytes in Binary IS Industry standard.

WRONG. The industry standard is decimal and has been officially since 1999. RTFS from IEC. Even before that they used decimal. Byte is 8 bits. Nobody's arguing that. What is being argued is the definition of Kilo (1000), Mega (1000^2), Giga (1000^3). These are SI units. Have always been decimal. When they were used in computers, they were STILL decimal. The new units, Kibi (1024), Mebi (1024^2), and Gibi (1024^3), are the binary versions of these. Windows shows the word Gigabyte where it should be showing Gibibyte, because the number it shows is in bianry. Hard drive makers sell in Gigabytes, and they say it on the box. They even say 1GB = 1000000000 bytes on the bottom of the box for dumb people. And yet people still ignore these simple facts. Why Macro***** continues to refuse to follow standards is unknown, and no matter the reason, it isn't the hard drive makers' fault. They are following the OFFICIAL IEC STANDARD. M$ is NOT. If you want to sue anyone, sue M$. I'm getting really tired of idiots arguing what a standard is without checking it first.

[maelstromracing]

WRONG. The industry standard is decimal and has been officially since 1999. RTFS from IEC. Even before that they used decimal. Byte is 8 bits. Nobody's arguing that. What is being argued is the definition of Kilo (1000), Mega (1000^2), Giga (1000^3). These are SI units. Have always been decimal. When they were used in computers, they were STILL decimal. The new units, Kibi (1024), Mebi (1024^2), and Gibi (1024^3), are the binary versions of these. Windows shows the word Gigabyte where it should be showing Gibibyte, because the number it shows is in bianry. Hard drive makers sell in Gigabytes, and they say it on the box. They even say 1GB = 1000000000 bytes on the bottom of the box for dumb people. And yet people still ignore these simple facts. Why Macro***** continues to refuse to follow standards is unknown, and no matter the reason, it isn't the hard drive makers' fault. They are following the OFFICIAL IEC STANDARD. M$ is NOT. If you want to sue anyone, sue M$. I'm getting really tired of idiots arguing what a standard is without checking it first.

Ok. Step back about 20 years...(were you even a self-conscious being at that time?) System ram and Computer drives (floppy, then eventually hard drives) used the binary system. IEC said that in 1998. Gibli is their terms. NOT THE ORIGINAL TERMS USED MORE MORE THAN 20 YEARS PRIOR! So there is lies the rip off to consumers. Why is system ram still binary and hard drives went with the IEC standard? To rip off consumers. Period. The standard worked for many many years. See 8 bits equals one byte (there have been historically different amounts, but this is still the amount used in modern computers. MS has been using the binary system well, was back to the old MS-DOS ways, so why should they change? They are still following the industry standard. The hard drive manufactors (if it was correct, then why isn't System Ram sold in 500MB, 1000MB etc?) are the ones that wanted the change to maximize their profits by changing the base that has been around since like the early 60s. I would bet that most people here arguing against M$ (don't know why you hate them so much, they single handedly made computers easy for people to use) haven't used DOS, a 486, a 386, a 286, a 8088 or an 8088 with an 8087 math co-processor. How about an old Apple II? The hard drive industry changed in the late 90s, everyone else has stayed the same? Why? They are still following industry standard..... 64 bit processor? 32 bit processor? It's the bastardization of the term Byte that they have done.

[petteyg359]

Has nothing to do with "modern computers", maelstrom. Hard drives have been in decimal since the beginning of hard drives. And the number of bits in a byte STILL has nothing to do with it. It's not the bits we're counting. It's the prefixes. The original terms used were the metric terms. As such, they used metric numbers (aka 1000, 1000,000, 1000,000,000). Since some people obviously aren't good at math, IEC introduced the binary prefixes in 1999. Note what David said several posts ago. Anyway, since it appears the dumb people have won their court case, it doesn't really matter and I'll just go back to wanting to strangle them all...

[maelstromracing]

Actually it does have to do with the modern computers. The term BYTE is a BINARY Term, therefore; you count it in binary. The Hard drive manufactors bastardized the term byte to the decimel version and ripped off consumers. All the IEC (wow, 1999, and the term Byte (BINARY) has been around since 1956 <-- 51 years!!!) Byte has always been binary. System RAM is sold on MEGA and GIGA bytes, not MEBI and GIBI bytes correct? I haven't seen any ram at Newegg.com (shameless plug) advertisting 512 Mebibytes. It's Mega. The whole reason the hard drive manufactors are being sued is they are using a BINARY BASE and making it into a DECIMEL Base. Like my analogy about the milk. 1 gallon is 1 gallon. We all know that. It is a 4 quart base system (BINARY). Now some new dairy folks start saying, no, a gallon is actually 3 quarts because it is 3 quart base system of measurement (DECIMEL) and some Dairy Board of Standards (IEC) comes out and says 1 gallon of milk is 3 quarts. And now all gallons of milk are 3 quarts, you are going to be a little ****ed off and start suing. The main focus of the lawsuit is they are using the term BYTE and it is a BINARY base. Go read some computer books about it. The IEC is not THE industry standard, but one of the leading ones. If you have been involved in computers since the 80s or early 90s you would know this and not blame Microsoft for messing everything up. Byte is a Binary Base and not a Decimel Base. The hard drive manufactors are the ones going around this and that is why they are getting sued and LOSING. You need to look back to the 50s and 60s and the first computers and their measurements. We have 64 bit processors (it can be 4 bits, 8 bits 32. 64 etc to a Byte, see the binary???) RAM: is Binary. Byte is Binary. Hard Drive Byte is decimel. See the odd man out? They are wrong. Period.

[petteyg359]

Actually it does have to do with the modern computers. The term BYTE is a BINARY Term, therefore; you count it in binary.Byte has never been a binary OR decimal term. Byte is only defining "group of bits". Bytes have consisted of 7 or 8 bits depending on the system. So you're going to tell me the numbers 7 and 8 can ONLY be defined in binary. Yeah, right. Try harder.The Hard drive manufactors bastardized the term byte to the decimel version and ripped off consumers.Utter BS.All the IEC (wow, 1999, and the term Byte (BINARY) which has nothing to do with the subject matter has been around since 1956 <-- 51 years!!!) Byte has always been binary. sorry, but nope System RAM is sold on MEGA and GIGA bytes, not MEBI and GIBI bytes correct? I haven't seen any ram at Newegg.com (shameless plug) advertisting 512 Mebibytes. It's Mega.That's because the manufacturers appear to be a bunch of lazy craps and are for some idiotic reason passively encouraging this retarded "sue everybody" behavior.The whole reason the hard drive manufactors are being sued is they are using a BINARY BASE again, byte isn't in any base, the prefix defines the base of the multiple and making it into a DECIMEL Base. Like my analogy about the milk. 1 gallon is 1 gallon. We all know that. It is a 4 quart base system (BINARY). now you're just being retarded. 4 quarts in a gallon has absolutely nothing in hell to do with any numbering base Now some new dairy folks start saying, no, a gallon is actually 3 quarts because it is 3 quart base system of measurement (DECIMEL) more retardedness and I'm cutting the rest of this stupid non-analogy out The main focus of the lawsuit is they are using the term BYTE and it is a BINARY base. Go read some computer books about it. follow your own advice The IEC is not THE industry standard, but one of the leading ones. any industry standard is better than the ignorant consumers' standard If you have been involved in computers since the 80s or early 90s you would know this and not blame Microsoft for messing everything up. Byte is a Binary Base and not a Decimel Base. simply put, um, no, and I did quite a bit of programming on TRS-80s and Commodore 64/128s The hard drive manufactors are the ones going around this and that is why they are getting sued and LOSING. You need to look back to the 50s and 60s and the first computers and their measurements. We have 64 bit processors (it can be 4 bits, 8 bits 32. 64 etc to a Byte, see the binary???) No. On a PC, a byte is 8 bits. Not anything less or more. Multiple bytes make words, doubles, longs, etc. RAM: is Binary. Byte is Binary. Hard Drive Byte is decimel. See the odd man out? They are wrong. Period.

CPUs and memory are binary because a transistor only has two positions, and any number of transistors equates to 2^X possible combinations. A flat platter in a drive does NOT have only two positions, and can store as many multiples of 2 positions as can be crammed into the surface area. Nowhere in any math I've ever heard of is a circle's surface area calculated by 2^X, therefore, a hard drive is NOT restricted to binary size units the way a transistor-based piece of hardware is. Please, please, please, do some thinking. Now I'm going to write a little math.

Say bitspercmsquared = BPCM2 = 16 (a binary number since you like them so much)
Say the platter has a radius of 4cm. The storage capacity could be BPCM2 * (Pi * 4^2) = BPCM2 * (16 * Pi) ~= BPCM2 * 50.27 ~= 804.25 bits. Obviously that's nowhere near real the size of a real hard drive, but it is most definitely not a number that would be used in a storage medium using binary numbers such as 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc. (Note those would be 1, 2, 4, 8 in decimal) 0000001100100100 = 804. Get the point? Don't be so blind to facts that you refuse to see simple logic.

BINARY: Start from right side. Digit is equivalent to decimal 1. Move one digit left. Digit is equivalent to double the value of the digit to the right. Therefore, you have in a byte 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1. A byte of 10000000 is 128 in decimal. A byte of 00000001 is 1 in decimal. 10000001 is 129.

[maelstromracing]

Byte has never been a binary OR decimal term. Byte is only defining "group of bits". Bytes have consisted of 7 or 8 bits depending on the system. So you're going to tell me the numbers 7 and 8 can ONLY be defined in binary. Yeah, right. Try harder.Utter BS.That's because the manufacturers appear to be a bunch of lazy craps and are for some idiotic reason passively encouraging this retarded "sue everybody" behavior.

CPUs and memory are binary because a transistor only has two positions, and any number of transistors equates to 2^X possible combinations. A flat platter in a drive does NOT have only two positions, and can store as many multiples of 2 positions as can be crammed into the surface area. Nowhere in any math I've ever heard of is a circle's surface area calculated by 2^X, therefore, a hard drive is NOT restricted to binary size units the way a transistor-based piece of hardware is. Please, please, please, do some thinking. Now I'm going to write a little math.

Say bitspercmsquared = BPCM2 = 16 (a binary number since you like them so much)
Say the platter has a radius of 4cm. The storage capacity could be BPCM2 * (Pi * 4^2) = BPCM2 * (16 * Pi) ~= BPCM2 * 50.27 ~= 804.25 bits. Obviously that's nowhere near real the size of a real hard drive, but it is most definitely not a number that would be used in a storage medium using binary numbers such as 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc. (Note those would be 1, 2, 4, 8 in decimal) 0000001100100100 = 804. Get the point? Don't be so blind to facts that you refuse to see simple logic.

BINARY: Start from right side. Digit is equivalent to decimal 1. Move one digit left. Digit is equivalent to double the value of the digit to the right. Therefore, you have in a byte 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1. A byte of 10000000 is 128 in decimal. A byte of 00000001 is 1 in decimal. 10000001 is 129.


once again you prove your ignorance. BITS make up BYTES. BYTES are BINARY. They have always been measured in BINARY (since 1956) and in 1998 (your IEC date is wrong too) the IEC says, well, Bytes for Harddrives are decimel so we will make up this nonsense called gibi mebli etc. Go re-read your computer science books. BYTES are BINARY.. They are measured BINARY. They are made of of BITs and Nibbles. OMFG. You really need to re-read your books. Maybe some prior to 1998 too. Bytes are measured in BINARY. Look at the system RAM. You still haven't tried to rebuff that. Your ignorance shows further. BYTES are BINARY. Hard drive manufactors tried to pull a fast one over the consumers and LOST. IE, the courts said they are wrong. To disagree is, well, utter stupidity.

[petteyg359]

I give up. If you won't even read what I say why bother...

[Blankfile]

Quick summary of thread:

-HDD manufacturers are advertising right
-Problem came from a certain mainstream OS which display wrong units(xB instead of XiB where X is the size{Usually G nowadays}.) since it's creation, henceforth creating confusion which led to the current lawsuit.
-Sue said OS company to get rich! </sarcasm>

I took on me to remove all the bickering for my summary, 4 lines instead of 4 pages. I also bolded the necessary words to simplify this by quite a bit.:santa:

Btw, i'm surprised this thread have not been locked, quite a few fiery exchanges hovering around.

[maelstromracing]

Quick summary of thread:

-HDD manufacturers are advertising right
-Problem came from a certain mainstream OS which display wrong units(xB instead of XiB where X is the size{Usually G nowadays}.) since it's creation, henceforth creating confusion which led to the current lawsuit.
-Sue said OS company to get rich! </sarcasm>

I took on me to remove all the bickering for my summary, 4 lines instead of 4 pages. I also bolded the necessary words to simplify this by quite a bit.:santa:

Btw, i'm surprised this thread have not been locked, quite a few fiery exchanges hovering around.

You are still WRONG.
BYTES are Binary. Period. Hard Drive manufactors are bastardizing the way they measure BYTES, (changing it from BINARY to Decimel).
If they are measuring it correctly, then why did they lose the lawsuit?
It's not the mainstream OS that does it. It has been that way since the begining. It is nothing the Bill Gates and his Microsoft OS have done as a conspiracy. It was done in Windows 98 (PRE IEC!) Windows 95, Windows 3.11, DOS 6.0, DOS 5.0. It was done the same way with Apple OS, ACOS, Pro-DOS etc. If it was done by the Binary measurement for 20 years why the sudden change?! If they were right, they would have won the lawsuit or appealled it. Let your ignorance go.

[Mpegger]

Hate to sound like I'm flaming here, but the only ignorance being shown is your own. You obviously are dead set in your thinking, and no amount of logical arguing or statements will change your line of thought. Your right, the whole (thinking) world is wrong. End of story.

But just remember this. Hard drive manufacturers since they started producing hard drives for the general public and even before then, to the scientific industry, always measured thier hard drives in bytes stored. To this day, programs, text files, pictures, audio, video, compressed files, etc etc etc, are still stored byte by byte on a storage medium. One byte at a time, not in groups of 1024, which is what the OS shows you, even though the OS does recognize the difference, its just showing the bytes in a different manner.

Case in point, my 500GByte hard drive....

http://www.jal2s.com/uploader/files/1/500GB.gif

Well lookey there. Its reading 500,105,216,000 bytes! I actually got 100MBs extra! Hoooey! I'm more lit up then a Texan during New Years! :beer:

Yet Windows, in thier infinite wisdom, is displaying those same 500GB as 465GB. Ummm... how'd I lose nearly 36GB? http://www.jal2s.com/uploader/files/1/headscratch.gif

Oh yeah! Its the OS that is displaying the space available as GiB (multiples of 1024), but still calling it GB (multiples of 1000). Well damn. Guess its the hard drive manufacturers fault for not telling the OS programs to state the value they show as GiB and not GB, even though the hard drive manufacturers themselves point that out on thier own boxes....

But as we can see, logic, no matter how flawed it was, prevailed once again in the court system. I guess every frivolous lawsuit won would mean there is now a new logic to be introduced that superseeds the old logic, even if the new logic is flawed. :bang head

[petteyg359]

Thanks mpegger, but he'll probably claim you doctored that screenshot.

[Mpegger]

Thanks mpegger, but he'll probably claim you doctored that screenshot.

_____________________________
Core 2 Duo E6600
4x1024MiB (not MB) Patriot PC2-6400 (4-4-4-11-2T)
1.5TB (not TiB) RAID5 (4x500GB (not GiB)) (Storage) (all Seagate)
1.0TB (not TiB) RAID0 (2x500GB (not GiB)) (Gentoo Linux) (all Seagate)
160GB (not GiB) (Windows XP Home SP2 + Vista64 Ultimate) (Seagate yet again)
300GB (not GiB) (Spare) (more Seagate)
256MiB (not MB) MSI 8600GTS

http://www.jal2s.com/uploader/files/1/crackup.gif AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! I love your new signature!!!!

[hafa]

...If they are measuring it correctly, then why did they lose the lawsuit?

Ummmm, because their opponents had more expensive/flashier/better politically connected lawyers?

[VinnyTAMU]

Mpegger,

Nice post to me that shows that Microsoft and Apple are misrepresenting hard drive size and not the HD manufacturers.

Great post

[unreal]

well i have 4 seagate drives, 1 is being returned cause it failed and is warrantied until 2011 but on the form it asks for purchase date, which i guessed around 5 yrs less than warrenty and the price im not sure what to put for it, or merchant, any ideas on what to do?

[petteyg359]

Did you buy it from somebody else? Ask them for the purchase date / price. If you bought it yourself, find the receipt. Or, tell us where you bought it. If you got a 500GB Seagate at NewEgg, it was probably $119.99. If it was at Best Buy, it was probably $99.99. If ZipZoomFly, probably $119.99. If it was a 400GB at NewEgg, then probably $109.99.

[unreal]

welli have 4 hds 3 different sizes, a 200, 320, 320, 400, all bought i think at different times in a 2 or 3 yr span between 2-3 years ago, receipt? um shish i dont know if i keep them that long, but yeah zzf buy.com and most likely newegg or something or a pm from cicuit city.. but if i cant find the receipt should i just guestmate?

[Tezcatlipoca]

WRONG. The industry standard is decimal and has been officially since 1999.

"Since 1999" is the key word here. Who do you think pushed for that?

What is being argued is the definition of Kilo (1000), Mega (1000^2), Giga (1000^3). These are SI units. Have always been decimal. When they were used in computers, they were STILL decimal.

Wrong.

kilo- mega- and the other prefixes are not exclusive to SI. The SI people did not just pull them out of thin air. You cannot claim that they are always decimal because SI uses them; this makes absolutely no sense. The byte is not an SI unit. Just because it uses prefixes that were from the beginning known as approximations of what would be SI (SI didn't even exist when the kilobyte was first used) doesn't mean it has to conform to its standards. That's ridiculous.

Those definitions were never used in computers as decimals until the harddrive manufacturers came along and decided to stir things up. RAM makers, of course, have no choice or interest in the matter since they are confined to powers of two.

I guess in you world, we should accept the "standards" rammed into the computer industry and run around with Gibibytes for computers and gigabytes for RAM. Sounds great. I guess we'd better get to changing all the legacy software over to reflect that too, since every OS from the dawn of time has used the units correctly -- as powers of two.

Why Macro***** continues to refuse to follow standards is unknown, and no matter the reason, it isn't the hard drive makers' fault. They are following the OFFICIAL IEC STANDARD. M$ is NOT. If you want to sue anyone, sue M$. I'm getting really tired of idiots arguing what a standard is without checking it first.

You'd better blame Apple, Unix, and Linus Torvalds too.

Face it. There was none of this bi- prefix nonsense until HDD manufacturers came along. The original usage was and always has been to use powers of two.

[petteyg359]

Some people are extremely stubborn. READ AND RESEARCH. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't be dumb because of sheer inability to enlighten yourself. The first physical disks made were in binary. 5.25" 1.2MB floppies were 1200000 bytes. 720KB 3.5" floppies were 720000 bytes. The standard was made because computers are available today to people much less knowledgable about them than people were when computers were first being used. And yet the standard is still ignored, because of people who refuse to learn.

[maxfly]

not cool man.i would edit your last comment or plan on a vacation.

it is possible to have a debate without lowering yourself to namecalling.

[maelstromracing]

Some people are stupidly stubborn. READ AND RESEARCH DAMNIT. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't be an idiot because of sheer inability to enlighten yourself. The first physical disks made were in binary. 5.25" 1.2MB floppies were 1200000 bytes. 720KB 3.5" floppies were 720000 bytes. The standard was made because of idiots like you who insist on refusing to learn and sue right and left just because this country has a seriously screwed legal system. And yet the standard is still ignored, because of PEOPLE LIKE YOU who REFUSE TO LEARN.

Please spread more of your ignorance. The byte is a BINARY unit of measurement and not a decimel. IE System Ram. What's the Difference between system ram of 512MB (ie Binary) and the Byte the hard drive manufactors use? They way the powers are done. Son, (I can call you that as you have obviously be in the computer world since, maybe the late 90s) BEFORE Hard Drives and BEFORE FLOPPY Drives, storage was measured using the binary system (IE System RAM, that has been around a lot longer than floppy and hard drives) You also left out the 8" Floppies and a few more formats. M$ is not the problem. The hard drive manufactors are. They lost their lawsuit, did we see an appeal? Guess not. No sense appealling if you are guilty. Please read some "old" computer science text books, say in the 1970s or even the 80s. then please come back and explain how the hard drive Byte and system ram byte are different? They aren't. The manufactors conviently switched to a better(for them) exponential system. Please spread more of your ignorance....

[petteyg359]

maxfly: Done, but IMNSHO the original was more accurate.

maelstromracing: Please read through this before making an "ignorant" and "uninformed" response like my last post was. :bang head

A byte is 8 bits. No base necessary. The number 8 can be expressed in decimal a 8, hex as 8, binary as 1000, octal as 10, etc. The bytes and bits in RAM and HDs (whether binary or decimal) is the same. The SI prefix is what determines the multiple, whether positve (10 is deci, 100 is hecta, 1000 is kilo) or fractional (.1 is deci, .01 is centi, .001 is milli). Elementary math classes generally teach this. There was originally no SI prefix to denote the binary multiples commonly used in RAM modules (1024, 1024^2 [1048576], 1024^3 [1073741824]). Therefore, the standard decimal SI prefixes k (note that in SI, an uppercase K means Kelvin, which I have previously used incorrectly), M, and G were used interchangably for both decimal and binary multiples. On early computers, the only users were quite knowledgable and knew the difference, so weren't confused. Now, with computers available to so many, those of lesser knowledge are easily confused by this. Hence the introduction of Kibi, Mebi, Gibi, etc. in 1999. Said prefixes are the binary ones.

Also note that hard drive manufacturers have included ON THE BOX (since _before_ 1999) a statement such as "1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes."

Binary sizing is used by modern system memory and nothing else that I can think of at the moment. Hard drive size, floppy disk size, flash disk size (yes, your flash "RAM" is in decimal), ethernet bandwidth, and megapixels on camera are all done in decimal.

BEFORE Hard Drives and BEFORE FLOPPY Drives, storage was measured using the binary system (IE System RAM, that has been around a lot longer than floppy and hard drives)
One of the most successful early computers was the IBM 1401. It was introduced in 1959 and by 1961 one out of every four electronic stored-program computers was an IBM 1401. It used decimal addressing and could have 1400, 2000, 4000, 8000, 12000 or 16000 characters of 8-bit core storage.[1] These sizes were often abbreviated, borrowing the k from the metre, kilogram and second (MKS) system; a reference to a "4k IBM 1401" meant 4,000 characters of storage (memory).[2]

Yes, I neglected to mention some older storage mediums in my other post because I felt that I listed enough to show that EVERY ONE OF THEM was advertised in a decimal size. You don't see people talking about 1.37329MB (which should actually be MiB or Mebibyte) 3.5" floppies, do you? No, they say 1.44MB (Megabyte). Decimal.

Reading through a post (and maybe learning something!) is much preferred to immediately replying with uninformed opinions. You may also note I've edited this post a few times to correct information I had wrong or didn't know.

[ou_phidelt]

Is this law suite stupid, no. Should they be required to pay damages, no. Should they and all other be required to change their advertisements, yes. Most of us may know what the disclaimer means, but how many of your parents do, or neighbors? We may be arguing about the difference in bytes and bites but 99% of the population couldn't care less. When they buy a 100GB drive they want to be able to put a 100GB of stuff on it, not exactly to much to ask. What they and everyone else has been doing is deceitful, just because everyone does it does not make it alright. Still they should not have to pay any form of damages, just change the packaging.

[Mpegger]

It is not deceitful. They buy a 100GB drive, they are getting 100GB of space. Its the OS which is incorrectly showing the space available as GB instead of GiB.

100GB = 100,000,000,000 bytes = 93GiB

Your OS of choice is stating 93GB as the hard drive size instead of 93GiB. Linux has corrected this problem (not sure when) and is using the terminology correctly when stating file sizes and hard drive capacities. Dont blame the hard drive manufacturers, blame the OS programmers for not correcting the situation.

And hard drive manufacturers wont magically add on the "missing bytes". There are no missing bytes. Just people who believe they're missing space because of what the OS is stating. The hard drive manufacturers will just state the hard drive capacity in SI terms to appease the uneducated masses. So you wont see any 500GB, or 1TB drives. You'll just see the IEC equivalent stated on the packaging, 465.6GiB and 931.3TiB respectively. Is there a physical byte difference? Well, mathematically speaking, you'll be off by some bytes, but no, there is no difference other then how the volume of the drive is stated.

Btw maelstromracing, your rigs in your sig have 1GiB and 512MiB of system ram, not 1GB or 512MB. If you want to correct others, you may want to correct yourself first.

[ou_phidelt]

I see your point Mpegger. A better solution would instead of the mostly pointless disclaimer they have now, put what it will be accessible to the user for storage.

[Mpegger]

I see your point Mpegger. A better solution would instead of the mostly pointless disclaimer they have now, put what it will be accessible to the user for storage.

The hard drive manufacturers are putting what is accessible to the user for storage.

Too many people already have it in thier head that the HD manufacturers are short changing them and that thier OS is correct in the values shown, when its the OS that is wrong when showing the value. That is the problem, the peoples thinking and the OS in use.

[petteyg359]

I see your point Mpegger. A better solution would instead of the mostly pointless disclaimer they have now, put what it will be accessible to the user for storage.

Possibly. I have yet to see anybody sue CRT manufacturers for selling 17" monitors that say 16" viewable.

Most of us may know what the disclaimer means, but how many of your parents do, or neighbors? We may be arguing about the difference in bytes and bites but 99% of the population couldn't care less.

That "couldn't care less" part is a major part of the problem. Just because I couldn't care less whether McDonald's food is healthy or not doesn't give me any right to sue them if I get fat. The information is easily available if you look.

[maelstromracing]

Possibly. I have yet to see anybody sue CRT manufacturers for selling 17" monitors that say 16" viewable.

They add the viewable part because they lost the class action lawsuit against them. Here is a link regarding it: http://www.citizen.org/litigation/briefs/class_action/articles.cfm?ID=6287

Now they say viewable because of the lawsuit, just like they add the new disclaimer to the hard drives size. BECAUSE THEY LOST LAWSUITS! Please get your facts straight. Your ignorance is becoming entertaining.

System ram is still advertised as 512MB and GB not Gibli. Check for your self. Why do you think 1 GB is base 1024 and not 1000. Think about.... go back a few years to some books that have been around before you are born....

[petteyg359]

maelstromracing: Yet again, that "disclaimer" on hard drives (which is NOT a disclaimer because it is really a simple statement of fact) is NOT new. It's been there long before this legal idiocy. And you yet again obviously didn't read my post or you would have noted that some of the earliest widely used computers (note that this was before the everybody-has-a-PC era) used decimal memory sizes! There is no base 1024. There is no base 1000. There is base 10 (AKA decimal) and base 2 (AKA binary). No such thing as Gibli either. Gibibyte. Mebibyte. And a I would bet one of the reasons RAM manufacturers don't advertise with the proper units is because people like you would sue them if they did.

[Mpegger]

Your ignorance is becoming entertaining.

The condescending nature of your posts, along with your constant demeaning attitude towards others are not.

System ram is still advertised as 512MB and GB not Gibli. Check for your self.

I'll allow you to check that on your own since, I can tell you right now, you do not have 1,000,000,000 bytes of system ram, which is what GB represents. You have approximately 1,073,741,824 bytes of ram, which would be 1GiB. Your getting your monies worth as the manufacturers are using the incorrect suffix to denote the size of the ram.

Why do you think 1 GB is base 1024 and not 1000.

I don't think that, because it is incorrect. KB, MB, GB, TB, etc, denotes to multiples of the power of 1000. KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, etc, denotes to multiples of the power of 1024. Hence why you do not have 1GB of system ram, you have 1GiB. Its not a complicated science here.

The only reason that it does cause confusion, is that many people, both the inept and the highly computer literate, freely exchange and use the original suffixes (KB, MB, GB, etc) for representing ram, hard drive space, files sizes, etc, etc, etc. This was a perfectly acceptable practice back in the infancy of the computing world, up to about a decade ago because the difference between stating "This is a 1KB file", and "This is a 1KiB file", were negligible.

Unfortunately in todays world with hard drives reaching 1TB sizes on a single drive, system ram of 2GiB+ becoming the norm, OS's, office suites, server software, games, etc, taking up multiple CDs and even DVDs worth of space, its no longer feasible to freely exchange the suffixes, as the differences in actual byte count become huge the higher up the powers you go. Hence why the Kibi, Mebi, Gibi, etc, suffixes were introduced (Nov 2000), to denote those differences.

But obviously, not all hardware manufacturers or software programmers have accepted those standards, or else there wouldn't be this ongoing discussion today.

Think about.... go back a few years to some books that have been around before you are born....

Computers for the general public havent been around that long, and most definetly the standards for the suffixes havent been around that long either (see above and here (http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm)). I strongly suggest you read that url, as its obvious your the one who is confused on the standards.

[gangaskan]

the horse is dead guys quit beating it :P


anywhom, i kidna skimmed the whole thing and i'm entitled for free segate tools if not mistaken. just wondering what actually came in this package? just diagnostic tools? or does it come with imaging and things along that line?

[bLack0ut]

lol some people are getting way too heated over this... but from what I can see, and my own research, is that indeed the OS is wrong... so this lawsuit is stupid and useless.

What I want to know is for what reason Windows/Apple/etc. adopted binary over decimal. It doesn't seem like it would benefit them in the least.

[petteyg359]

bLack0ut: Binary makes sense for things using transistors as they're some exponent of on/off switches. Decimal makes sense for other things simply because it's what people naturally count in (unless you're some insane geek that likes to count in octal or hex :p). But even then that doesn't really make sense because that IBM from 1959 addressed in decimal, and flash storage, which is a bunch of transitors (right?), is also done in decimal. So I have no idea as to the why of it. If you find that somewhere post it :)

[MarkS]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp.

I hate Microsoft, but they are not at fault here, nor is any other OS manufacturer. One MB IS 1024 bytes, one GB IS 1024 MB, etc. This is an undeniable truth in a binary system (ALL computers are binary systems). It is the manufacturers of drives that decided that 1000 bytes equaled one MB, 1000 MB equals 1 GB, etc. This whole MB/MiB, GB/GiB and soon TB/TiB thing is a farce. The question I have is why? Why not make a drive with the correct binary representation of a MB or GB? Apart from profits, what other reason could there be? Adding a disclaimer does not change the fact that a multiple GB hard drive holds 74 MEGABYTES less than stated... PER GB!

Why is no one mentioning the fact that RAM is measured in binary? If this whole hard drive thing is a non-issue and we can just come up with new standards as an excuse for profits, why then are the RAM manufacturers not following suit? At the price per MB for RAM, it would make perfect business sense for them to follow in the hard drive manufacturer's footsteps and make a 1 MB RAM, ROM or Flash chip hold 1000 bytes. We end users would have no recourse. It seems that memory (RAM/ROM/Flash) manufacturers understand that they are dealing with a binary system. Strange.

[maelstromracing]

I hate Microsoft, but they are not at fault here, nor is any other OS manufacturer. One MB IS 1024 bytes, one GB IS 1024 MB, etc. This is an undeniable truth in a binary system (ALL computers are binary systems). It is the manufacturers of drives that decided that 1000 bytes equaled one MB, 1000 MB equals 1 GB, etc. This whole MB/MiB, GB/GiB and soon TB/TiB thing is a farce. The question I have is why? Why not make a drive with the correct binary representation of a MB or GB? Apart from profits, what other reason could there be? Adding a disclaimer does not change the fact that a multiple GB hard drive holds 74 MEGABYTES less than stated... PER GB!

Why is no one mentioning the fact that RAM is measured in binary? If this whole hard drive thing is a non-issue and we can just come up with new standards as an excuse for profits, why then are the RAM manufacturers not following suit? At the price per MB for RAM, it would make perfect business sense for them to follow in the hard drive manufacturer's footsteps and make a 1 MB RAM, ROM or Flash chip hold 1000 bytes. We end users would have no recourse. It seems that memory (RAM/ROM/Flash) manufacturers understand that they are dealing with a binary system. Strange.


You said it a lot better than I could....

[petteyg359]

MarkS: I love the fact that you haven't bothered to read through the thread. Good job!

[maelstromracing]

Hey petty, you still haven't explained the different in "bytes" between RAM and Hard Drive Storage..... You ignorance grows as the days get short.

[MarkS]

MarkS: I love the fact that you haven't bothered to read through the thread. Good job!

What I find odd from what I've read is the insistence from some members that OS manufacturers are somehow at fault here for "adopting" a binary system rather than a decimal system. It would seem that many of the members of this computer forum either do not know or have forgotten that operating systems predate hard drives and the decimal system (as it relates to this discussion) that hard drive manufacturers have adopted. Computers are binary systems and all applications and files that are stored on the drives are binary (not because of the OS, but because of the processor). Drive manufactures are saving a bundle by not having enough sectors on the platters to hold a true MB or GB of data. Bundled with the fact that the average computer user (and more advanced users as it would seem...) does not understand how a computer operates on the most basic level or stores and processes data means that they can get away with nothing more than a little disclaimer.

[Mpegger]

What I find odd from what I've read is the insistence from some members that OS manufacturers are somehow at fault here for "adopting" a binary system rather than a decimal system.

The OS manufacturers are at fault for continuing to refer to the available space incorrectly, not for adopting a different system. Linux is one of the few (only?) which has implemented the IEC 60027-2 standard and shows the suffixes correctly, which again, has been around since late 2000.

It would seem that many of the members of this computer forum either do not know or have forgotten that operating systems predate hard drives and the decimal system (as it relates to this discussion) that hard drive manufacturers have adopted.

Your also forgetting that when computers were first introduced, there were no standards. Standards arose when a common piece of hardware was used frequently by many in the scientific community and was constantly being referenced (dont forget that [rich] consumers didnt get thier hands on a personal computer till the 70's, yet computers were around since the 50's, plenty of time to come up with the original standards).

Take 'byte' for instance. How many bits are in a single byte? If your thinking about our modern day PC's that we're using right now, yes 8 bits would = 1 byte. So would 16 and 32, and now, 64. But even with that we still refer to 8 bits = 1 byte. And the reason that still holds true today is because of the dominant microprocessor that worked 8-bits at a time way back then, before consumer PCs, before modern day PC's, before the PC that is sitting in your home right now. But there were systems way back then that processed 10bits at a time (as well as other numbers of bits), and that 10bit computer was referred to as a decimal computer even though it still processed binary bits, and those 10 bits were still referred to as 1 byte. Now what if today we were still working with a 10bit (decimal) based computer, yet the OS still referred to large byte sizes by binary methods? Who would be "wrong" then?


Computers are binary systems and all applications and files that are stored on the drives are binary (not because of the OS, but because of the processor).

Yes, computers work with 1's and 0's, I'm not arguing that, and that is what a bit (binary digit) is. A byte however, is neither binary or decimal, its a measurement of bits, which can have any number bits within it. Again, modern systems, that would refer to 8bits. Other systems, who knows, it depends on the system itself. Either way, a byte is a byte. Its 1 group of bits. Its not a 1. Its not a 0. Its not a multiple of 10. Its not a multiple of 2. Its not a multiple of 100, 1000, 1024, or anything else. Its a byte. Nothing more.

Its how the manufacturers and programmers are reffering to a large sum of bytes with a suffix that is the problem. They're using the wrong suffixes for the amount they are representing.

1,000,000 bytes = 1 MB
1,000,000 bytes = 0.95 MiB
1,000,000 bytes ≠ 0.95 MB
1,000,000 bytes ≠ 1 MiB

The above four lines are true and correct with the current standards. The MB is referring to the measurement of a power of 1000. The MiB is referring to a measurement of a power of 1024.

Its just a measurement. A short way of representing a large value.

Forget that computers process binary bits. Forget that ram doesnt come in exact multiples of 1000. None of that has to deal with how we refer to large volumes of bytes in a condensed and simple manner.

Drive manufactures are saving a bundle by not having enough sectors on the platters to hold a true MB or GB of data. Bundled with the fact that the average computer user (and more advanced users as it would seem...) does not understand how a computer operates on the most basic level or stores and processes data means that they can get away with nothing more than a little disclaimer.

And all that really has nothing to do with how the values are represented. :bang head

Heres a question for all of you: How many quarts are in 10 gallons?

[maelstromracing]

The OS manufacturers are at fault for continuing to refer to the available space incorrectly, not for adopting a different system. Linux is one of the few (only?) which has implemented the IEC 60027-2 standard and shows the suffixes correctly, which again, has been around since late 2000.



Your also forgetting that when computers were first introduced, there were no standards. Standards arose when a common piece of hardware was used frequently by many in the scientific community and was constantly being referenced (dont forget that [rich] consumers didnt get thier hands on a personal computer till the 70's, yet computers were around since the 50's, plenty of time to come up with the original standards).

Take 'byte' for instance. How many bits are in a single byte? If your thinking about our modern day PC's that we're using right now, yes 8 bits would = 1 byte. So would 16 and 32, and now, 64. But even with that we still refer to 8 bits = 1 byte. And the reason that still holds true today is because of the dominant microprocessor that worked 8-bits at a time way back then, before consumer PCs, before modern day PC's, before the PC that is sitting in your home right now. But there were systems way back then that processed 10bits at a time (as well as other numbers of bits), and that 10bit computer was referred to as a decimal computer even though it still processed binary bits, and those 10 bits were still referred to as 1 byte. Now what if today we were still working with a 10bit (decimal) based computer, yet the OS still referred to large byte sizes by binary methods? Who would be "wrong" then?




Yes, computers work with 1's and 0's, I'm not arguing that, and that is what a bit (binary digit) is. A byte however, is neither binary or decimal, its a measurement of bits, which can have any number bits within it. Again, modern systems, that would refer to 8bits. Other systems, who knows, it depends on the system itself. Either way, a byte is a byte. Its 1 group of bits. Its not a 1. Its not a 0. Its not a multiple of 10. Its not a multiple of 2. Its not a multiple of 100, 1000, 1024, or anything else. Its a byte. Nothing more.

Its how the manufacturers and programmers are reffering to a large sum of bytes with a suffix that is the problem. They're using the wrong suffixes for the amount they are representing.

1,000,000 bytes = 1 MB
1,000,000 bytes = 0.95 MiB
1,000,000 bytes ≠ 0.95 MB
1,000,000 bytes ≠ 1 MiB

The above four lines are true and correct with the current standards. The MB is referring to the measurement of a power of 1000. The MiB is referring to a measurement of a power of 1024.

Its just a measurement. A short way of representing a large value.

Forget that computers process binary bits. Forget that ram doesnt come in exact multiples of 1000. None of that has to deal with how we refer to large volumes of bytes in a condensed and simple manner.



And all that really has nothing to do with how the values are represented. :bang head

Heres a question for all of you: How many quarts are in 10 gallons?


Ok mpegger...since you liked to quote wiki a few posts ago...

"The word "byte" has numerous closely related meanings:

A contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits (binary digits). The use of a byte to mean 8 bits has become nearly ubiquitous.
A contiguous sequence of bits within a binary computer that comprises the smallest addressable sub-field of the computer's natural word-size."

See binary? I do. See binary system? So if the computer is binary, then all measurements are in binary. It's like saying 10 gallons has 40 quarts, but the new standard is the liter and their are now magically 40 liters in 10 gallons. Get it?

more from your friend wiki
"The term "byte" comes from "bite," as in the smallest amount of data a computer could "bite" at once. The spelling change not only reduced the chance of a "bite" being mistaken for a "bit," but also was consistent with the penchant of early computer scientists to make up words and change spellings. However, back in the 1960s, the luminaries at IBM Education Department in the UK were teaching that a bit was a Binary digIT and a byte was a BinarY TuplE (from n-tuple, i.e. [quin]tuple, [sex]tuple, [sep]tuple, [oc]tuple ...), turning "byte" into a backronym"

Wow.... Binary digit.... Byte... Binary.....

"A byte was also often referred to as "an 8-bit byte", reinforcing the notion that it was a tuple of n bits, and that other sizes were possible."

"A contiguous sequence of binary bits in a serial data stream, such as in modem or satellite communications, or from a disk-drive head, which is the smallest meaningful unit of data. "

See binary data stream??? See DISK DRIVE HEAD in the same sentence??? It is BINARY Data that they are re-measuring...

Just for some fun:
"Following "bit," "byte," and "nybble," there have been some analogical attempts to construct unambiguous terms for bit blocks of other sizes.[4] All of these are strictly jargon, and not very common.

2 bits: crumb, quad, quarter, tayste, tydbit
4 bits: nibble, nybble
5 bits: nickle
10 bits: deckle
16 bits: playte, chawmp (on a 32-bit machine)
18 bits: chawmp (on a 36-bit machine)
32 bits: dynner, gawble (on a 32-bit machine)
48 bits: gawble (under circumstances that remain obscure) "

The computer is a binary system. It's OS runs using binary. The hard drives USED to be measure in binary, before they switched to SI..... Mega means:2^20 or 1024^2 but when they switched (key word there, switched, remember they used to be binary....) to the SI they went with 10^6 or 1000^3....

It doesn't matter what the IEC or whoever "made the new standard" it was different before that. It makes the hard drives so inflated space... The hard drive manufactors are wrong. Loss their case. <-- IE They pleaded their case to a judge who listened to both highly educated sides and said, yes, they are wrong... See my gallon/liter/quart comment above... Stop spout how in 2000 the IEC did this.... That is doesn't matter. All that means is someone with enough pull made the change. Hell if we get enough dairy processors together, I bet we can change the gallon measurement from 4 quarts to a gallon to 4 liter per gallon, all it takes is money....I bet you would like 4 liters to a gallon since it is a decimel! :bang head

[VinnyTAMU]

I took the below quotes from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_system) under the "Units" section.

The international system of units consists of a set of units together with a set of prefixes.

and this one...

A prefix may be added to units to produce a multiple of the original unit. All multiples are integer powers of ten.

So the above quote (from wiki) states that the prefix is base 10, not base 8. So taking that into account I reach this conclusion:

1 Gb = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 Gibi = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Also if you look at Table 2 of the same refrenced webpage. You will see that all the prefixes are show as 10^x.

So Giga (G) = 10^9.

[shadin]

Wow, just wow.

In any case, since you in all your wisdom know about MS showing the capacity in binary, surely Seagate knows this and can make the necessary change to their hardware so when we plug it in it shows the capacity we paid for and without us having to do an algebraic equation to confirm it. Very simply solution indeed.

In my opinion, relatively very few people are as knowledgeable about these matters as you guys are. Your regular family man Joe needs to buy a 120GB hard drive, he goes and buys one that's marked to have 120GB. He plugs it in and finds out that he's missing close to 10GB of space. In my opinion, the hard drive companies should advertise how much space you actually get to use.So Seagate should change the way that hard drives have been measured since 1956 because of Microsoft? Screw that, I use Linux mostly and they managed to do it right. Don't dumb things down or make them flat out wrong just because "family man Joe" is a tard that can't read on the box of the hard drive that they're measuring it in decimal.

The harddrive makers knew when they made the drive that it would take 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. and they chose to ignore it and instead purposely mis-lead people by using another system.

I'd like to see the result of this case make all harddrive manufactues convert to the number system that is followed on which the product is used. Aka 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte etc. nothing more.What product is that? Once again, why should they change the way it's always been? They're reporting it correctly, my 500GB hard drive is exactly what it's supposed to be, 500,000,000,000 bytes.

You just helped me prove my point, thanks

The average user has no clue the difference between GiB and GB so let's just keep it simple and instead of throwing more suffixes at us, just show us the two numbers we pay attention to, the capacity of the drive we just bought and the capacity MS is going to tell us we have.
Showing the capacity in GB/GiB wouldn't be a bad thing, but if family-man Joe is too stupid to read the package in the first place to see that they're using decimal, I doubt he's smart enough to know the difference. Or to be bothered with a quick Google search and educating himself.

I agree with the lawsuit. The Hard Drive manufactors have twisted the definition of bytes. It has always been binary (look at your ram... 512? =512MB, not 500MB. 1024MB -1 GB) See that analogy. That is how it is to be measure, BINARY. The hard drive manufactors in their race to produce the largest drive changed what they call bytes. Imagine going to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk and getting only 3 quarts because the dairy industry decided to change what they call a gallon. Bytes in Binary IS Industry standard.Face it. There was none of this bi- prefix nonsense until HDD manufacturers came along. The original usage was and always has been to use powers of two.Wrong wrong wrong. All wrong. Here's the first hard drive, made in 1956. Notice that it was 5MB, which consisted of 5,000,000 bytes.

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/worlds-first-hard-drive-1956

Is this law suite stupid, no. Should they be required to pay damages, no. Should they and all other be required to change their advertisements, yes. Most of us may know what the disclaimer means, but how many of your parents do, or neighbors? We may be arguing about the difference in bytes and bites but 99% of the population couldn't care less. When they buy a 100GB drive they want to be able to put a 100GB of stuff on it, not exactly to much to ask. What they and everyone else has been doing is deceitful, just because everyone does it does not make it alright. Still they should not have to pay any form of damages, just change the packaging.They ARE getting 100GB! MS and other OS manufacturers are reporting things incorrectly, don't keep things WRONG because people are dumbasses.

My 160GB drive has 160,031,014,912. I got 31 million free bonus bytes.LOL. Bonus Bytes made me laugh...

[eye of the hawk]

I guess all those people telling me i was a fool for ordering WD were onto something lol

[Tezcatlipoca]

maxfly: Done, but IMNSHO the original was more accurate.

maelstromracing: Please read through this before making an "ignorant" and "uninformed" response like my last post was. :bang head

A byte is 8 bits. No base necessary. The number 8 can be expressed in decimal a 8, hex as 8, binary as 1000, octal as 10, etc. The bytes and bits in RAM and HDs (whether binary or decimal) is the same. The SI prefix is what determines the multiple, whether positve (10 is deci, 100 is hecta, 1000 is kilo) or fractional (.1 is deci, .01 is centi, .001 is milli). Elementary math classes generally teach this. There was originally no SI prefix to denote the binary multiples commonly used in RAM modules (1024, 1024^2 [1048576], 1024^3 [1073741824]). Therefore, the standard decimal SI prefixes k (note that in SI, an uppercase K means Kelvin, which I have previously used incorrectly), M, and G were used interchangably for both decimal and binary multiples. On early computers, the only users were quite knowledgable and knew the difference, so weren't confused. Now, with computers available to so many, those of lesser knowledge are easily confused by this. Hence the introduction of Kibi, Mebi, Gibi, etc. in 1999. Said prefixes are the binary ones.


Would you please understand that these prefixes are not exclusive to SI? As bytes are not SI units, neither are the prefixes used for them. Why should we arbitrarily force bytes into an unrelated system of measurement?

SI did not just pull the prefixes out of the air and trademark them. They were commonly used prefixes. Furthermore, these prefixes were used in computing before SI was standardized.

Microsoft, Linux, Apple, and everyone else are reporting sizes correctly. and the way they've always been calculated until relatively recently. It's people like media manufacturers and you who've arbitrarily decided that SI has a monopoly on Greek prefixes and we have to force bytes into SI. Why should everyone change over because some companies realized it'd be cheaper for them to market their products as being bigger than they were and some purist SI fanatics were enraged that somebody else was making use of a couple of prefixes?

Invent a computer than runs on base 10, and then you'll have a point.

[shadin]

Would you please understand that these prefixes are not exclusive to SI? As bytes are not SI units, neither are the prefixes used for them. Why should we arbitrarily force bytes into an unrelated system of measurement?

SI did not just pull the prefixes out of the air and trademark them. They were commonly used prefixes. Furthermore, these prefixes were used in computing before SI was standardized.

Microsoft, Linux, Apple, and everyone else are reporting sizes correctly. and the way they've always been calculated until relatively recently. It's people like media manufacturers and you who've arbitrarily decided that SI has a monopoly on Greek prefixes and we have to force bytes into SI. Why should everyone change over because some companies realized it'd be cheaper for them to market their products as being bigger than they were and some purist SI fanatics were enraged that somebody else was making use of a couple of prefixes?

Invent a computer than runs on base 10, and then you'll have a point.

Did you fail to notice that the first hard drive from 1956 was calculated on the decimal system, or that Linux/UNIX has generally always calculated on the decimal system as well?

[RJARRRPCGP]

ethernet bandwidth, and megapixels on camera are all done in decimal.


Then why when I tested my internet bandwidth back when I had 56k, does 5 KB/s equal 40 Kbps then?

I wasn't born yesterday!

[vixro]

I've got a 200 giger from seagate from about 4 years ago. I wouldn't even dream of trying to get money back for it. Almost every idiot that knows anything about technology knows you aren't going to have that exact amount of usable storage space when it states you're only getting a decimal instead of the actual number of bytes in a GB.


200,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 186.264514923095703125


I knew I'd be getting 186.2GB durr???

[ASync]

Should ram also note that it will not have the advertised bandwidth unless you clock them right? Cause I m sure that is something far more obscure for the common man. Crucial here I come, time to get my ddr3 chips for free!