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LaCie 400 gig external HD isnt 400 gig!
- Thread starter JW8725
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rossoUK said:
Probably no where. It's an industry standard to use "metric" definitions of MB and GB. A 400GB drive from any vendor would format to the same size as reported in OS X.
Way to contribute to the discussion...cube said:
And FAT 16 has a 4 gigabyte partition limit, not FAT 32...if I remember correctly...
rossoUK said:
I pretty sure that based on his previous comment he would expect exactly what you're angry about and thus wouldn't care.
I see why you're mad, but this is just the way things are. You're gonna have to get over it because you really have no legal recourse. If you don't like it you can take it back realizing that when you buy a different brand, because you're so angry at LaCie, it will be advertised in that exact same way.
rossoUK said:
So you read the box, made an assumption prior to purchase without researching the implications, and now blame LaCie for your poor assumption? Hmm...
cube said:
Way to provide a good argument.
I"m talking strictly with computers and the binary system, not the decimal system, metric system, etc.
I though that would have been obvious from the context of the thread.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/K/kilobyte.html
I guess that this is just something that has always been true between mfr'ers of hard drives and operating systems. The problem is that it is not isolated to any manufacturer -- every hard drive is labelled with base 10 sizes, and every system or product that contains a hard drive is advertised this way, and yet every OS uses the base 2 numbering system. Sorry!
dejo said:
I understand that he's disappointed. (I was too when I first ran into this 13 yrs ago). I think what he's finding in this thread is that there's a long-standing industry practice that is a bit misleading (true in a sense like a queen size bed could be the approximate size of Elizabeth II, I suppose), but understood by many who'll notice these types of things. I don't know if it's a poor assumption - it's reasonable that it wouldn't be expected.
It's like you think you're buying a wood door. The door arrives and it's some composite. You log on to doorrumors.com and find out that in the industry "wood" is understood to mean something other than "wood" and folks who have dealt with doors for years all know this. It's still a surprise and disappointment.
just gota say get over it. if you NEED 400 gigs then pay like $40 and get a "40 GB" drive. if you could afford the 400 GB drive then another $40 shouldnt be out of your rang
It sucks that you hadn't heard of this before but do a "Get Info" on your internal HD and you'll see Apple do it too. My 100GB HD has a capacity of only 93GB.
Everyone does it. Stick with the Lacie though because they make great HDs.
Everyone does it. Stick with the Lacie though because they make great HDs.
musicpyrite said:Way to provide a good argument.
I"m talking strictly with computers and the binary system, not the decimal system, metric system, etc.
I though that would have been obvious from the context of the thread.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/K/kilobyte.html
I am also talking about computers. Who cares what some random web site says?
If you use the SI prefixes for binary units, you are commiting a historical gaffe which is avoided by using the IEC binary prefixes.
"GiB" == kluge. And after the fact.cube said:
1B = 8b
1KB = 1024B
1MB = 1024KB
1GB = 1024MB
No KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, or anthing else. That little "i" was introduced to avoid the confusion and is a complete kluge.
Thanks, though.
ChrisBrightwell said:
If that is true then whom ever first developed that system did it wrong. Kilo means 1000, Mega means 1000000 and so on. I am guessing that when computers first came about they didn't think the "extra" 24 would matter but it does now. Anyone who buys hard drives should be know that the notation used is not correct. I also think the computer industry should change their notation.
It may be unethical, but welcome to big business. It's not our fault you didn't read the fine print. Might want to watch the name calling kid.rossoUK said:
rossoUK said:
Yep - unfortunatly true. Same here: I have the 300 gig drive that has only 276 gigs. I was disappointed as well, but I already knew about the marketing trick.
Why is it, then, that a 1GB RAM module is 1024MB (each of which are 1024KB, each of those consisting of 1024B) ... with no problems or confusion?cube said:
I buy a 1GB DIMM, install it, and see it as 1GB. NO PROBLEM.
I buy a 1GB HDD, though, and install it, and it doesn't show up as 1GB.
Hell ... when I order a 1Mb line from an ISP, they don't lop it off at 1million bits, either. Nor does my gigabit ethernet hardware stop at 1billion bits/second. Interesting, eh?
All of these "kluge" implementations (by your definition) have been around for as long as I've been using computers (~1986), but there are only issues with one of them. I wonder why that is.
Wait ... I know. It's deceptive marketing. I'll be damned.
Instead of adhering to standards that, for all intents and purposes, have been around since the beginning, hard drive manufacturers introduced ambiguity by adhering to their own standard implementation.
And *that* is why we have this problem of a 400GB HDD not actually holding 400GB of data.
ChrisBrightwell said:
There are issues because the storage manufacturers are the only ones using the prefixes correctly.
'Megabyte' and so on do not figure in any standards document. The only standard definitions are the binary units by IEC, which rule computer systems. If you're going count in binary units, you should use the standard names.
rainman::|:| said:OMG, people are actually still surprised by this? Is this your first time on a computer?
Finally somebody said the obvious thing. I was almost laughing the entire time while I was reading this thread... I've never heard someone get worked up over drive space before, I thought that almost everybody knew that you get less than it says on the box! Oh well, now ya know I guess... Maybe you can start a movement to stop all hard drive makers from using this terrible practice.
Cube, just give up! I was incorrect at first as well about the prefixes, sort of. I knew the GB officially stood for 10^9 and had even heard about the IEC units, like GiB once before. Still, I had forgotten about those since they seem to be so rarely used, even when referring binary based numbers. Your initial post set me straight - thanks for reminding me about the IEC prefixes.cube said:
However, as you can see some people aren't going to listen to reason so I wouldn't bother wasting your own time on this thread any more. I gave up a long time ago.
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