iPod 160GB iPod only 147GB usable...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiB

long standing issue with HDD vendors, they quote capacity in gigabytes, but the OS reports gibibytes which give you automatically a 8% reduction in space.

a "160 GB" drive only has 149 GiB, which is usually what the OS reports.

160*1000*1000*1000 = 149*1024*1024*1024.

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~J~ said:

That loss is due purely to formatting.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte said:

Consumer confusion

As of 2007, most consumer hard drives are defined by their gigabyte-range capacities. The true capacity is usually some number above or below the class designation. Although most manufacturers of hard disks and Flash disks define 1 gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes, the computer operating systems used by most users usually calculate a gigabyte by dividing the bytes (whether it is disk capacity, file size, or system RAM) by 1,073,741,824. This distinction is a cause of confusion, especially for people from a non-technical background, as a hard disk with a manufacturer rated capacity of 400 gigabytes may have its capacity reported by the operating system as only 372 GB, depending on the type of report.

The difference between units based on SI and binary prefixes increases exponentially — in other words, an SI kilobyte is nearly 98% as much as a kibibyte, but a megabyte is under 96% as much as a mebibyte, and a gigabyte is just over 93% as much as a gibibyte. This means that a 500 GB hard disk drive would appear as "465 GB". As storage sizes get larger and higher units are used, this difference will become more pronounced.

Note that computer memory is addressed in base 2, due to its design, so memory size is always a power of two (or some closely related quantity, for instance 384 MiB = 3×227 bytes). It is thus convenient to work in binary units for RAM. Other computer measurements, like storage hardware size, data transfer rates, clock speeds, operations per second, etc., do not have an inherent base, and are usually presented in decimal units.

As an example, take a hard drive that can store exactly 250×109 or 250 billion bytes after formatting. Generally, operating systems calculate disk and file sizes using binary numbers, so this 250 GB drive would be reported as "232.83 GB". The result is that there is a significant discrepancy between what the consumer believes they have purchased and what their operating system says they have.

Some consumers feel short-changed when they discover the difference, and claim that manufacturers of drives and data transfer devices are using the decimal measurements in an intentionally misleading way to inflate their numbers. Several legal disputes have been waged over the confusion. See Binary prefix — Legal disputes.

The basis of the problem is of course that the official definition of the SI units is not well known, and some legal settlements include directions for manufacturers to use clearer info, e.g. by stating a hard disk's size in both GB and GiB.

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Shorties said:

Don't get me wrong I know there is the formating and stuff that takes up room, but a 160GB iPod that only lets you use 150GBs, why don't they just label it as a 150GB iPod. I mean it wasn't as big of a difference when it was only 27 usable on my old 30, but 13 gigabytes is a lot, heck its bigger then the iPhone and the Nanos.

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mjm1091 said:

besides formatting there is software in a Hard Drive that you can't see if you have ever done an erase of a PC you may have noticed a screen with the words Department of Homeland Security. The easiest analogy would be a black box an airplane anything that was done on the airplane is recorded. Any thing that is done on a computer is recorded on the hard drive. It takes a certain level of government clearance to access what was recorded. This applies to hard drives as well as some flash drives.

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mjm1091 said:

besides formatting there is software in a Hard Drive that you can't see if you have ever done an erase of a PC you may have noticed a screen with the words Department of Homeland Security. The easiest analogy would be a black box an airplane anything that was done on the airplane is recorded. Any thing that is done on a computer is recorded on the hard drive. It takes a certain level of government clearance to access what was recorded. This applies to hard drives as well as some flash drives.

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TuffLuffJimmy said:

In other words you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

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notjustjay said:

No no, he's right. The reason there's only 147 gigs available on a 160 gig iPod is because the other 13 "missing" gigs contains a complete record of every song you've ever listened to! They can also tell where the song came from, and if you downloaded it illegally, or shoplifted the CD you ripped it from (yes, they can tell! Ever notice that RFID tag scanner installed somewhere near your disc drive?? They've been secretly installing them in every drive since 2001), they can send the info to the RIAA and prosecute. They can get your name and address from the Address Book records when you sync your iPod! The usage data is synced back to your Mac (that's why sometimes the sync takes a few seconds longer, and you're not really sure why) and sent to Apple when you do Software Updates. That's why you don't suspect anything!

Don't even get me started on what they're really doing with Mobile Me...

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mjm1091 said:

besides formatting there is software in a Hard Drive that you can't see if you have ever done an erase of a PC you may have noticed a screen with the words Department of Homeland Security. The easiest analogy would be a black box an airplane anything that was done on the airplane is recorded. Any thing that is done on a computer is recorded on the hard drive. It takes a certain level of government clearance to access what was recorded. This applies to hard drives as well as some flash drives.

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OllyW said:

Are you wearing a tin foil hat?

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