just wondered if someone could tell me why a 500gb hard drive is reported as 465gb under winxp
i know this happens, just wondered what the reson was
Smoke and mirrors, its because its not really a 500gb HDD.
they just round it up, like my 120 gig hdd is really 115 gig.
nope... its because of all the 8 bits in a byte thing....
i cant remember how they do it, but its something like, theres only 8 bits in a byte but they count it as 10 bits to a byte ?
500GB is counted in thousands. windows counts in 1024s. (2 to the power 10)
1000 kilobytes in a megabyte, 100 megabytes in a gigabyte, but theres 1024 bytes in kilobyte & not 1000, 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, etc.
All those bytes that are rounded down all adds up.
Since there are actually 1024 bytes in a kilobyte etc, and this is what the computer will use:
500000000000 % 1024 %1024 % 1024 = 465.66GB
but manufacturers divide by 1000
500000000000 % 1000 %1000 % 1000 = 500GB
bits to a byte = 8
bytes to kilobyte = 1024
kilobytes to a megabyte 1024
megabytes to a gigabyte 1024
Nobody says that though... everyon says 1000 in a megabyte & 10000 megabyte in a gigabyte,etc.
own up.. who entered 500000000000 %1024 %1024 %1024 into a calcualtor?
its daft that they are marketed as 500gb then of they are only 465gb
surely 500gb should be 500gb!
It was originally marketed as such for the people that couldnt add/didnt know how to calculate it, now they simply label it "overheads" or some tripe.
Quote from: crazylegsits daft that they are marketed as 500gb then of they are only 465gb
surely 500gb should be 500gb!
The difference between Decimal and Binary my friend :D
Quote from: crazylegsjust wondered if someone could tell me why a 500gb hard drive is reported as 465gb under winxp
i know this happens, just wondered what the reson was
Nothing to do with XP.
Its the manufacturers rounding off the numbers. In the future they may not be able to after certain legal changes.
Quote from: CypherIts the manufacturers rounding off the numbers.
No its not, its the difference in binary and decimal, as stated by M3ta7h3ad, Eggtastico and myself.
Quote from: crazylegsits daft that they are marketed as 500gb then of they are only 465gb
surely 500gb should be 500gb!
As has been stated before manufacturers use decimal sizes while everyone else uses binary. Effectively its a fix, but there isnt much you or anyone else can do about it.
There is also an overhead for the formatting.
Quote from: MaldonadoQuote from: CypherIts the manufacturers rounding off the numbers.
No its not, its the difference in binary and decimal, as stated by M3ta7h3ad, Eggtastico and myself.
Youve just agreed with me.
Quote from: CypherQuote from: MaldonadoQuote from: CypherIts the manufacturers rounding off the numbers.
No its not, its the difference in binary and decimal, as stated by M3ta7h3ad, Eggtastico and myself.
Youve just agreed with me.
Erm, no, i didnt. If you cant see how wrong you are then Ill just leave you to it.
the partition table takes up a bit of room to IIRC or that could have been the old myth meh :cheers:
Quote from: MaldonadoQuote from: CypherQuote from: MaldonadoQuote from: CypherIts the manufacturers rounding off the numbers.
No its not, its the difference in binary and decimal, as stated by M3ta7h3ad, Eggtastico and myself.
Youve just agreed with me.
Erm, no, i didnt. If you cant see how wrong you are then Ill just leave you to it.
Effectively the manufacturers are rounding off to the nearest thousand/million/billion so you are agreeing with him by default. OK they are using decimal rather than binary, but the effect is the same. The aim is to make the drive capacity look bigger.
theyre not rounding it off....
as already stated... to a computer its 1024MB to a GB
when they sell you hard drives, they count 1000MB to a GB
(I also asume theres some manufactuing/designe related reason to do this ;) )
Quote from: knightywhen they sell you hard drives, they count 1000MB to a GB
No, they count 1,000,000,000 bytes as a GB or 1GB rounded off to the nearest Yankee billion.
Quote(I also asume theres some manufactuing/designe related reason to do this ;) )
More profit. Really there is no reason except for the fact it looks good on advertising and the boxes.
yes, they do.... I was just explaining quick, the long version is... they count 10 bits to a byte, 1000 bytes to a kilobyte, 1000 kilobytes to a megabyte and 1000 megabytes to a gigabyte... (instead of 8, 1024, 1024 and 1024) ;)
but i think the more profit thing is balls, there has to be more reason to it than that.... because if it was just to make the drives look bigger for profit, one or more manufactrers would have already exploited it, changed the way they do it and have big adverts about the evil compertition ripping you off ;)
(also, you have to think about the false advertising rules etc...)
Quote from: SeriousQuote from: MaldonadoQuote from: CypherQuote from: MaldonadoQuote from: CypherIts the manufacturers rounding off the numbers.
No its not, its the difference in binary and decimal, as stated by M3ta7h3ad, Eggtastico and myself.
Youve just agreed with me.
Erm, no, i didnt. If you cant see how wrong you are then Ill just leave you to it.
Effectively the manufacturers are rounding off to the nearest thousand/million/billion so you are agreeing with him by default. OK they are using decimal rather than binary, but the effect is the same. The aim is to make the drive capacity look bigger.
Indeedy. Yes I know they giving the decimal conversion of the data avaialbe but it also happens to be just rouding it off to a nice round number.