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LaCie 400 gig external HD isnt 400 gig!
- Thread starter JW8725
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Well...it's also that 1GB isn're really 1 GB. You'll never get it to say 400GB, it'll hover around 375 where you have it. My 40GB HD on my laptop is really 37.5...and that gap just widens the larger the hard drive.
Sucks donit!
Sucks donit!
Hahaah! Welcome to the wonderful world of marketing.
Yes, they might advertise that they have 400 gigs of space since there is officially, 400,000,000,000 bytes of information. Marketers tend to use a metric form of determining disk sizes, but us smart computer folk actually know that there are not 1000 bytes in a megabyte but 1024 bytes. When you do the math 400,000,000,000 bytes equals 374 gigabytes.
Sorry you feel gipped.
Yes, they might advertise that they have 400 gigs of space since there is officially, 400,000,000,000 bytes of information. Marketers tend to use a metric form of determining disk sizes, but us smart computer folk actually know that there are not 1000 bytes in a megabyte but 1024 bytes. When you do the math 400,000,000,000 bytes equals 374 gigabytes.
Sorry you feel gipped.
To put simply: yup.
Just one of those things you have to get used to in life: kinda like how drinking Bud Light won't hook you up with hot twins.
Just one of those things you have to get used to in life: kinda like how drinking Bud Light won't hook you up with hot twins.
ITASOR said:Use disk utility to reformat it for Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That usually clears up a bit.
I think I read you're using it with a PC too though, in that case you'll have to use Fat32 and not have anything bigger than 4GB.
I don't know where you got the four gig limit from. That is NOT how it works. I have a 40 gig drive in one partition in FAT32 (which I formatted using Disk Utility under Panther), which supports drives up to two *TERABYTES* in size. Under XP, you can only format a FAT32 partition up to 32GB in size, though larger sizes are available via arcane MS DOS skillz.
(see for example http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/fat32.html )
All formats "waste" some disk space. If you ever bother to read disclaimers about harddrives, they usually say "actual formatted size less", or something to that effect.
i think what he was saying is that with fat32 you cant have any single file thats larger then 4gigs. not a partion.. i believe thats correct.
Mavimao said:
That is a lame example. Bud dont say on their packaging that they can hook you up with twins do they? LaCie clearly call this a 400 gig HD. AND ITS NOT. Imagine if i'd gone for the 1TB one? Imagine how much space I would have lost? 26 gig is serious space. I bought this HD to back up my cd collection and the less space I have the less I can store and ultimately price per cd becomes more for this.
Wonder where I stand legally on this??
rossoUK said:
You're right. Lame.
I understand your frustration, and maybe we *should* sue the bastards! They have laws against false advertising, and in this case we could say that they're trying to say that 1000 feet equals 1 mile when in reality it doesn't.
you have no space to stand on (pun intended). there is a fine line somewhere on the packaging.
here's the "fine line" from lacie's site:
* 1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Once formatted, the actual available storage capacity varies depending on operating environment.
here's the "fine line" from lacie's site:
* 1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Once formatted, the actual available storage capacity varies depending on operating environment.
Mavimao said:
sorry, but that's another bad analogy. the difference is in bits and bytes which technically are different!
i'm sorry we just have to deal with this stupid marketing. how about this marketing analogy: gas is 1.5999999 - why isn't it just 1.60?
As a general rule for drives measured in GB you can assume you will only get about 93% of the advertised disk spaced because 1000^3 / 1024^3 = 0.931.rossoUK said:
Technically, they are not lying because if you look closely on the packaging, somewhere in fine print you will see something like this:
1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
It is still very deceptive in my opinion becuase it's not intuitive to users. You buy a 400 GB drive you expect to go home, install it and see the OS report back 400 GB or damn close after the amount taking for formatting and index information.
Yeah a byte is 8 bits - that is not the issue here.Manzana said:
This is a difference between the SI meaning of giga and how giga is used in the computer world. For defining units the SI definition of giga is 1000^3 (10^9) but in computers it is 1024^3 (2^30) as sizes get larger the difference gets larger because while the "kilo" units are only off by a factor of 2.3%, "mega" units are off by a factor of 4.6% and "giga" units are off by a factor of 6.9%. It will only get worse when we have drives measured in TB.
Moshi dame dattara, Lacie ni Henpin ***** kudasai.
There...that made about as much sense as all this math mumbo jumbo! Okay...so ya'll is just smart'r than me, and I'm just jealous of your mad math skills.
There...that made about as much sense as all this math mumbo jumbo!
Okay...so ya'll is just smart'r than me, and I'm just jealous of your mad math skills.FWIW, I'd rather be good at athletics, but I was dealt the uncoordinated math/science geek hand. You gotta play what you're dealt though - sometimes this requires bluffing.wheezy said:Moshi dame dattara, Lacie ni Henpin ***** kudasai.
There...that made about as much sense as all this math mumbo jumbo!
Maths aside. I bought this with the belief that it was 400 gig. Well its not, its far short. I shall be contacting LaCie to hear their side then I'm callin my lawyer. Serious! I'm in the "if it says 400 gig then it should be and if it aint then its not, so if its advertised as 400 gig theres something wrong" school of thought.
Also I should mention another thing. They advertise this as being silent. Yeah their fanless case is silent but the F****** hard drive is noisy. If I'd wanted chirping I'll have bought a sparrow...etc.
Also I should mention another thing. They advertise this as being silent. Yeah their fanless case is silent but the F****** hard drive is noisy. If I'd wanted chirping I'll have bought a sparrow...etc.
You have absolutley no legal recourse with this.
ANYONE who has ever bought any storage device, be it hard drive, CD-R/W, DVD+/-R/W, flash memory, floppy disk, zip disk, ect or a device with said storage device; computer, MP3 player, digital camera, cell phone, TiVo, ect, has been "misled." Misled is a bad word to use here because I bet somewhere on their website and the box, it states formatted capacity may be less. It doesn't state how much less. If you really want 400 gigabytes of storage, then you'd have to get a 450 or 500 gigabyte hard drive. Simple as that. You weren't misled, you just didn't read the damn box.
ANYONE who has ever bought any storage device, be it hard drive, CD-R/W, DVD+/-R/W, flash memory, floppy disk, zip disk, ect or a device with said storage device; computer, MP3 player, digital camera, cell phone, TiVo, ect, has been "misled." Misled is a bad word to use here because I bet somewhere on their website and the box, it states formatted capacity may be less. It doesn't state how much less. If you really want 400 gigabytes of storage, then you'd have to get a 450 or 500 gigabyte hard drive. Simple as that. You weren't misled, you just didn't read the damn box.
yg17 said:
No I can assure you I DID READ the box. I just didnt expect 26 gigs missing ya know wot im saying? it's not like its a couple of megs here and there!
I think thats a good 65 cds on lossless I wont be able to store! Im sure if you were in my situation you wouldnt be too happy either mate!
I can't believe you've never heard of this before every hard disc sold has followed this practice apart from a few isolated examples. You'd get laughed out of court if you tried to sue.
rossoUK said:
When I bought my 200 gig hard drive, I knew it was going to only be 180 or so gigs. When you found out that the formatted capacity was less, you should have either posted on here or called Lacie to find out what the actual capacity is if you're using the drive for something where you need as much space as possible.
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