500 gb hard drive registers at 465 gb???Help

[imported_goldlight]

Hey guys!!!
I just bought 2 new hard drives:

a western digital 250 gig
a western digital 500gig

Here is the problem..

I installed both of them on my computer
And the 250 registers at 232 gigs???
and the 500 registers at 465 gigs????
Where the hell are the rest of my gigs???
I want what I payed for lol..

So far they have not been formatted with any operating systems...
I'm using them for back up.How do I get my extra gigs back?????
Any advice on what to do????

 

[Matthias99]

Hard drive "gigabyte" = 100,000,000,000 bytes.

Windows "gigabyte" is actually a "gibibyte" or 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.

If you look at the capacity in bytes of the drive, you'll see it has almost exactly 250,000,000,000/500,000,000,000 bytes.

 

[cubby1223]

500*(1000/1024)^3=465
250*(1000/1024)^3=232

 

[Random Variable]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Hard drive "gigabyte" = 100,000,000,000 bytes.

Windows "gigabyte" is actually a "gibibyte" or 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.

If you look at the capacity in bytes of the drive, you'll see it has almost exactly 250,000,000,000/500,000,000,000 bytes.

I think you meant 2^30.

 

[Steve]

Yeah, 1,073,741,824

 

[imported_goldlight]

Thanks guys!!!!
Im so glad that I am part
of this community!!!!!

 

[WiseOldDude]

I can see it now, in the year 2525, some fool will buy a 10 Gizzillion Terabyte microdrive, and some fool will be posting on a forum, "It only shows 9.45876 Gazzillion Terabytes, they cheated me"

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: WiseOldDude
I can see it now, in the year 2525, some fool will buy a 10 Gizzillion Terabyte microdrive, and some fool will be posting on a forum, "It only shows 9.45876 Gazzillion Terabytes, they cheated me"

It's worse, Maxtor and some others got sued over this from people claiming false advertising.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: WiseOldDude
I can see it now, in the year 2525, some fool will buy a 10 Gizzillion Terabyte microdrive, and some fool will be posting on a forum, "It only shows 9.45876 Gazzillion Terabytes, they cheated me"

I think it really sucks how they advertise gigs, a 500 will always format to 465, it's not like he paid for a 500 gig and got 498. If you expect 500 and get 35 less, that's a lot of gigs. It's not like it differs from system to system, they should either make the drives bigger so it'll be 500 megs after formatting, or list the size as 465, it's not like anyone can use the drive unformatted.

 

[Steve]

It's not about formatting. There's no space lost except in the advertising. 465GB is actually how much are on that drive, regardless of format.

 

[JW310]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: WiseOldDude
I can see it now, in the year 2525, some fool will buy a 10 Gizzillion Terabyte microdrive, and some fool will be posting on a forum, "It only shows 9.45876 Gazzillion Terabytes, they cheated me"

I think it really sucks how they advertise gigs, a 500 will always format to 465, it's not like he paid for a 500 gig and got 498. If you expect 500 and get 35 less, that's a lot of gigs. It's not like it differs from system to system, they should either make the drives bigger so it'll be 500 megs after formatting, or list the size as 465, it's not like anyone can use the drive unformatted.

It's not that formatting the drive causes the "loss" of capacity. It's due to the way the manufacturers label the drives, as the posters above have already stated.

To a manufacturer, one "GB" is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Operating systems see one "GB" as 1,073,741,824 bytes.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: sm8000
It's not about formatting. There's no space lost except in the advertising. 465GB is actually how much are on that drive, regardless of format.

Well, some of that space is used by the OS for file system structures, and that space DOES come out of the 500gig. But the amount is minimal compared is fairly trivial to the 1000bytes vs 1024bytes issue.

 

[Shawn]

I really hate how there are 2 different measurements. They should pick one and have it be universal. I don't care which.

 

[WiseOldDude]

One thousand to us = 1,000

One thousand to a computer = 1,024

This is not 1960, it is past time that people learn some of the basics about computers.

 

[Nothinman]

This is not 1960, it is past time that people learn some of the basics about computers.

Actually it should be the opposite, as computers progress they should get easier so people have to know less about them in order to use them.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: WiseOldDude
I can see it now, in the year 2525, some fool will buy a 10 Gizzillion Terabyte microdrive, and some fool will be posting on a forum, "It only shows 9.45876 Gazzillion Terabytes, they cheated me"

It's worse, Maxtor and some others got sued over this from people claiming false advertising.

Just like the monitor manufacturers who were claiming 17" diagonal, when the viewable was 15.9 diagonal. It's a plot, I tell you.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

This is not 1960, it is past time that people learn some of the basics about computers.

Actually it should be the opposite, as computers progress they should get easier so people have to know less about them in order to use them.

Apple has been doing this for years.

 

[Nothinman]

Apple has been doing this for years.

Supposedly, I was never very impressed with OS X though, hell it's just now getting multiple desktops.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: WiseOldDude
One thousand to us = 1,000

One thousand to a computer = 1,024

This is not 1960, it is past time that people learn some of the basics about computers.

The "kilo-", "mega-", and "giga-" prefixes (from the metric system) have well-defined meanings -- 1,000, 1,000,000, and 1,000,000,000 respectively. A "megawatt" (random example unit) is 1,000,000 watts, not 1,024,768 watts, and any rational person who understood the metric system but not the innards of computers would expect a "megabyte" to be 1,000,000 bytes and not 1,024,768 bytes.

The 'binary' units (2^10 = 1024, 2^20 = 1024768, 2^30 = 1073741824) are 'kibibytes' or 'binary kilobytes' (KiB), 'mebibytes' or 'binary megabytes' (MeB), and 'gibibytes' or 'binary gigabytes' (GiB) -- but those formal units didn't exist until fairly recently, so most people in early computer science just used the metric terms improperly. Now they're stuck in everyone's heads (and a lot of programs), unfortunately.

Basically -- mathematically, Windows is wrong, but going by computer science 'tradition', the hard drive manufacturers are wrong (or at least misleading). IMO, Windows and other OSes and tools should change to use the right units, or show it both ways.

 

[bsobel]

Basically -- mathematically, Windows is wrong, but going by computer science 'tradition', the hard drive manufacturers are wrong (or at least misleading). IMO, Windows and other OSes and tools should change to use the right units, or show it both ways.

I agree it should be shown one way, but I tend to lean more towards the current 'OS' version since we will continue to add power in ^2 moving forward. Everything else (video memory, main memory, etc) is referenced as MeB the HD manufactures should stop playing games and list capacities the same (especially now when the differences are getting so noticeable)

 

[Seekermeister]

It's not all in the fashion in which gigs are counted, because my Maxtor 80GB HDs have 2 more gigs than my WDC 80GB HD. Actually, Maxtor called 82GB as 80GB.

 

[Nothinman]

It's not all in the fashion in which gigs are counted, because my Maxtor 80GB HDs have 2 more gigs than my WDC 80GB HD. Actually, Maxtor called 82GB as 80GB.

That's almost certainly not related to the 1000vs1024 issue and you probably just got some mislabled drives or something.

 

[imported_goldlight]

 

[imported_goldlight]

Thank you!!!!


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