incorrect hard drive sizes?

[ChinamanatNCSU]

how come my hard drives advertise 40 Gb, but when I install it it really can only store 38.7 or so?

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Formatting takes up space, plus manufacturers may call a KB 1000 bytes, when in reality it is 1024 bytes.

40000000 / 1024 / 1024 = 38.14697265625

 

[BCYL]

In reality 1MB = 1024 bytes

but when harddrive manufacturers calculate their harddrive space, they use 1MB = 1000 bytes instead....

Also your Master Boot Record/Partition information takes up a little bit of space...

 

[ChinamanatNCSU]

ok, I just thought they were cheating me out of a couple of gigs

they should use 1024 instead of 1000 though shouldn't they? feels almost like false advertising

 

[Zenmervolt]

<<they should use 1024 instead of 1000 though shouldn't they? feels almost like false advertising>>

I have yet to see a HDD box that did not have something like the following advertisment: "GB=1 Billion Bytes, actual detected size may be less due to the way software detects HDD size."

ZV

 

[Scootin159]

<< ok, I just thought they were cheating me out of a couple of gigs

they should use 1024 instead of 1000 though shouldn't they? feels almost like false advertising >>



Yeah, it is kinda annoying, I wish some company would just initiate a changeover to the 'true' size.



<< plus manufacturers may call a KB 1000 bytes, when in reality it is 1024 bytes >>



Just other #'s for reference:

1kB = 2^10 Bytes = 1,024 Bytes - 1000 = 24 Bytes or 2.34% loss
1MB = 2^20 Bytes = 1,048,576 Bytes - 1,000,000 = 48,576 Bytes or 4.63% loss
1GB = 2^30 Bytes = 1,073,741,824 Bytes - 1,000,000,000 = 73,741,824 Bytes or 6.87% loss
1TB = 2^40 Bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 Bytes - 1,000,000,000,000 = 99,511,627,776 Bytes (~93 GB!) or 9.05% error

The errors are getting bigger & bigger, they aren't going away.