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What the ----, Seagate?!

foo2thabar

foo2thabar

Well-Known Member
NLC
I mean, really!!

You don't need 107 ----ing gigabytes for the filesystem!!!!

I paid for a terabyte and all I got was a lousy 917 gigabytes.

And I'm still trying to track down why my system is only recognizing 3.19GB of RAM out of the 4 I installed. Yeah, I'm running 64bit.
 
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For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, most file systems define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes.
 
Yeah, I forgot about all that.

I think I figured out why it's not recognizing the RAM. Recompiling kernel to test a theory.
 
Yeah, a GB isn't a GB by manufacturing terms. The higher the number, the more it seems you're losing in space, which sucks because it feels like you're paying for that extra few GB that is advertised, though you're never getting it.
 
It's just a marketing scheme. Everybody knows you're not really getting 1 TB, but rather 900 something GB instead. The HDD manufacturers get away with marketing them as such because nobody has done anything to force them otherwise. Or vice versa, nobody has forced the developers of these file systems to read 1 GB as 1000MB rather than 1024MB. Who is right and who is wrong? Neither.
 
Manufacturer's Standards:
Code: 
1000bytes       1000 kilobytes     1000 mb      1000000000 bytes
------------ x ---------------- x ---------- =  ---------------------
1 kilobyte        1 megabyte       1 gigabyte      1 gigabyte


On disk:
Code: 
1024bytes       1024 kilobytes     1024 mb      1073741824 bytes
------------ x ---------------- x ---------- =  ---------------------
1 kilobyte        1 megabyte       1 gigabyte      1 gigabyte

So the percent difference between the two:
Code: 
(1073741824 - 1000000000)          
------------------------   =     ~7.37%
      1000000000

So if you're talking about gigabytes, the manufacturer's standard is about 7.35% lower than what you see on disk. If you're talking about terabytes, the manufacturer's standard is off by about 9.95%
 
TehGuy said:
Manufacturer's Standards:
Code: 
1000bytes       1000 kilobytes     1000 mb      1000000000 bytes
------------ x ---------------- x ---------- =  ---------------------
1 kilobyte        1 megabyte       1 gigabyte      1 gigabyte


On disk:
Code: 
1024bytes       1024 kilobytes     1024 mb      1073741824 bytes
------------ x ---------------- x ---------- =  ---------------------
1 kilobyte        1 megabyte       1 gigabyte      1 gigabyte

So the percent difference between the two:
Code: 
(1073741824 - 1000000000)          
------------------------   =     ~7.37%
      1000000000

So if you're talking about gigabytes, the manufacturer's standard is about 7.35% lower than what you see on disk. If you're talking about terabytes, the manufacturer's standard is off by about 9.95%
Click to expand...
Those bastards. I wasn't expecting precisely 1TB when I bought it ... maybe 980 to 990 GB ... but 917 ... those bastards. I hate marketing.
 
deeplist said:
It's just a marketing scheme. Everybody knows you're not really getting 1 TB, but rather 900 something GB instead. The HDD manufacturers get away with marketing them as such because nobody has done anything to force them otherwise. Or vice versa, nobody has forced the developers of these file systems to read 1 GB as 1000MB rather than 1024MB. Who is right and who is wrong? Neither.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info. A friend of mine went through the exact same thing and thought he had been diddled by the supplier. So now I can explain to him how it works!
 
I thought this was basic knowledge that it was rounded to the nearest zero by manufacturers, specific marketing wouldn't work because it wouldn't be as easy for it to sell. For example, my ipod is 64GB sold, but its really just over 59GB. In that number 5GB is a lot to lose - but not all devices would have that same amount of usable space because of the process [so not all devices could be marked as 59GB). So rounding it and stating it as 64GB saves that problem. Legally they're saved too, since they state on drives/documentation/websites that they use the "1000000000" as a GB.

The annoying part is the cost between the numbers. If you paid for say a 2GB USB pen, but with only a few MB over a 1GB drive, which is half the price, you'd be pissed for paying for just a number.

Stuff like this reminds me of marketing where they purposely mark something as Gb/Mb etc, but pass it off to those who have no clue as if its the same as GB/MB, even though people should know that its huge in difference.
 
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Dynash said:
I thought this was basic knowledge that it was rounded to the nearest zero by manufacturers, specific marketing wouldn't work because it wouldn't be as easy for it to sell. For example, my ipod is 64GB sold, but its really just over 59GB. In that number 5GB is a lot to lose - but not all devices would have that same amount of usable space because of the process [so not all devices could be marked as 59GB). So rounding it and stating it as 64GB saves that problem. Legally they're saved too, since they state on drives/documentation/websites that they use the "1000000000" as a GB.

The annoying part is the cost between the numbers. If you paid for say a 2GB USB pen, but with only a few MB over a 1GB drive, which is half the price, you'd be pissed for paying for just a number.

Stuff like this reminds me of marketing where they purposely mark something as Gb/Mb etc, but pass it off to those who have no clue as if its the same as GB/MB, even though people should know that its huge in difference.
Click to expand...

I get tired of explaining to people that their internet connection isn't 6 megabytes per second.

And for the record, I haven't bought a hard drive in several years.
 
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

Or to quote some random guy on the internets:
the manufacturer is actually using the SI prefix "giga" correctly.
giga means 10^9.

computer scientists a long time ago decided to call 2^30 "giga", because it is close to 10^9, and it was easier to convey the order of magnitude of a number using familiar terms.
 
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