The lies have been getting worse over the years. I have a 2TB external hard drive, but 1.5 of it is actually available. This isn't the first time I've had an external hard drive that does this. Even USB flash drives do it too. If it needs drive space to make it work, then make it a 2.5TB hard drive and advertise it a 2TB. I don't understand how this is allowed without it being considered false advertising.
shareFor the most part they are simply making use of the difference between how humans count and how computers count.
For a human a kilo is 1,000, a mega is 1,000,000, and so on.
For a computer a kilo is 2^10 = 1024, a mega is 2^20 = 1,048,576
Harddisk manufacturers say the harddisk has 2TB = 2,000,000,000,000 Byte and that's what it really has,
a computer divides that by 2^40 (or for humans better understandable 4 times in a row by 1024) and displays 1.82TB
That obviously looks as if it were getting worse, because with every additional ,000 added, i.e. in the step from giga to tera a computer does another division by 1024 making the result the computer displays look further off the human way of counting.
Isn’t that basically TB vs TiB?
shareYes, but that's where harddisk manufacturers get a bit "tricky" and leave away the "i".
Also there are other ways of expressing it, sometimes you find 1kB = 1,000 byte and 1KB = 1,024 byte, where hardly anyone (myself included) knows what (if any) the official way to express the difference between dual and decimal system would be.
Far worse it gets with internet connections, where providers don't count in byte but in bit, resulting in a 1Gigabit = 1,000,000,000 bit connection having a real max speed of 119MB.
I'd rather them just give me the exact number of what it will display at. I have 2Tb hard drives and both gave me a different number when I first got them.
shareEven if you have 1000, they will still disappoint.
False advertising is common.
Like chicken nuggets contain no chicken at all, I bet you did not notice that one.
Or from where they got me, a monkey fruit sweetener sold in supermarket, contains 1% monkey fruit sweetener.
And hot dogs never use real dogs.
shareNot to mention different file systems could leave you with varying amounts of usable storage space depending on sector sizes and such.
shareBlock size in combination with file systems makes even more difference.
Two files cannot share the same block, so if you have blocks of 4KB (which is the standard nowadays) every single file on your harddisk will be rounded up to the next full 4KB, i.e. if a file has 101KB, it will occupy 104KB on the harddisk.
Windows even displays the difference, if you right click a file and choose properties Windows will give you two values, "Size" and "Size on Disk" where Size on Disk will almost always be larger, never smaller, because a file will rarely have an exact multiple of 4KB.
Enjoy the times we live in and the low price of entry to 1 TB.
At the dawn, it was ten MEGABYTES.... yes 10 MB in a removeable disc pack the size of a small trash can.
Maybe costing $5000. Yes, 10 MB 5 grand, small trash can sized.
Life is very very VERY good!
I remember when I bought a 250MB USB Flash drive for $20. The times have changed.
shareWe agree on something. End of world imminent.
I love how people try to explain it away - like it is your fault your getting less because "that's how computers work".
It would be nice if they said X amount of immediately available space full stop.
That's exactly what they do, they say for a 2TB harddisk 2,000,000,000,000 byte of space immediately available.
They even do the full stop afterwards and do not explain in detail that for a computer to display 2TB it would require 2,199,023,255,552 byte, because that number would look for most "normal" users just too odd to be a harddisk size.
Nope. I'm with samoanjoes. When I buy 2TB, I want 2TB, not 1.6TB or whatever it works out to.
IBM, Bill Gates, Seagate and Western Digital can all eat a dick together.
Your only problem on that statement is, this has been decided long before Bill Gates even had a company, before MS-DOS had been invented, even before harddisks existed.
The very first harddisks had about 1MB space on them and costed in a range of $10,000, they had their capacity already stated in the decimal value of bytes they had for the simple reason that they were sold to humans who naturally use the decimal system to calculate values.
Furthermore, what difference would it make?
Nobody is putting additional profit in their pockets for stating the capacity in decimal numbers, the price is what this size costs to produce and to distribute.
Larger harddisks cost more, because they have to have either more magnetical surface on the inside or a more sensitive read/write sensor and the increase in price isn't relative to the size, but increases faster than the size does, so if you want to insist to get in the TB range 10% more capacity than the decimal value, the harddisks having that space would then cost 20% more.
All that, including you paying more per TB just to have a very odd number for capacity printed on the label?
Next step: admitting Picard is the best. Baby steps right now, but you'll get there.
shareKirk is 10000000 MEGATBYTES better than Picard.
See, I can talk computer too.
In computer terms that would be 10 Petabyte and just like you're accusing harddisk manufacturers above, you're making the very same adjustment to decimal numbers, because 10 Petabyte would in computer terms be 10048576 Megabyte.
shareBecause I am kind of a grinch, so I am going to point out: A petabyte (PB) is a unit of measurement for digital data storage that's equal to: 1,000 terabytes (TB), 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
A Terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.
"10000000 MEGATBYTES" is 10,000,000,000,000 bytes.
So "10000000 MEGATBYTES" is 10 Terabytes, and 0.01 petabyte.
That's my point from above, because you're using decimal numbers for all of this, just like I pointed out manufacturers do with harddisk capacities.
If you were using computer terms a terabyte would have 1.099.511.627.776 byte and that's what the others in here want to get when they purchase a 1TB harddisk.
But thanks for correcting my messing up with the zeros above, it's 10 tera, not 10 peta.
People with autism must be helluva fun at parties.
sharePeople have egos, everyone is a hero in their own story.
That is why it is rarely seen that people admit they were wrong or made a mistake.
So this guy is aces in my book.
Look, people who don't understand how computers work need to vent and if it lines up with corporate greed, all the better.
Well that wasn’t funny at all ☹️
shareThere is nothing funny about consumers being screwed over by the bigwigs.
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The amount shown is right when I plug it in for the first time before I even do anything with it. I check the size before I even format it, but yes when I do format it afterward, it is NTFS.
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I just think it should be like how VHS cassettes were back in the day. You could have a 6-hr tape, and they would tell you on the case how long it would be if you chose between SP, LP, or EP. No matter what, the minimum would have been 6 hours. They actually would have a few more minutes to guarantee you were over.
Also, I'm not being serious about the class action lawsuit.
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If I was rich, I'd definitely pay for my own developers. Let's keep the numbers transparent.
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Gotta be honest, I was highly anticipating a pun, what a letdown 🤓
shareI want my money back.
shareY'all's were paying me?!?
shareYou owe me!
shareCorrection: I own you.
shareWell, as long as I get to carry on living the life I’m living, that’s fine.
shareYou can. Now make me a sandwich, peasant.
shareThis is horrible. They were making these crappy laptops that they've now downgraded the hardware to be more like a phone's standard, with a 20 gigabyte harddrive
To make matters worse it ran windows 10 and only 12gb was even available!
And a "Celeron" series dual core processor Pentium that is from 2002.... 2002!!! You could HEAR the thing again like old computers used to do, and literally hear all the spam running in the background
Target tried pawning these things off on people like they were new technology a couple years ago
Their electronics section is just the worst
But that has nothing to do with the topic here, whether a 20GB harddrive has 20,000,000,000 byte or 21,474,836,480 byte isn't much of a difference.
The difference here is the price for the whole thing.
You just can't get a laptop with 32GB RAM and 2TB harddisk for a few $100.
On Amazon you can buy a complete computer including a Win11 pro license for something like $199.
Subtract what the Windows license costs and then take a wild guess how much hardware is in it.
A few years ago I've actually bought one of these super cheap offers, because they had it with a big discount, the whole thing under $100 while the Windows license alone would have cost me as an end customer more than the license included in the computer.
The hard drive on my laptop is 128G, but I still feel is way too low. I'm not sure why laptop hard drives are generally lower than PC's
shareover all, I agree with you.
NO ONE buys 10 gallons of gas but only gets 7.9 gallons in the tank.
NO ONE buys a gallon of milk only to get 8.135 gal in the jug.
I know how computers work, but we should get what we are paying for
Class action lawsuit confirmed. I'm doing it for the people!
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