Computers & Internet Computer manufacturers lying about size

[Illinois Nazi]

Inspired by the Pizza size thread, here's one that I've been wondering about for a while...

With computer storage space getting bigger and bigger, how far will it go before manufacturers have to actually give you the amount of space they say they are?

I have a "16GB" iPhone, with a capacity of 13.73GB. I have a "160GB" iPod with a capacity of 148.79GB. As the "size" of a product gets bigger, so does the differential between the actual capacity and what it says on the box.

For those not aware, the issue stems from the fact that 1 kilobyte is not equal to 1,000 bytes - it is 1,024 (which is 2 to power 8) for computer binary language related reasons that I'm not going to go into here.

Now if you're just talking about kB or even MB the difference isn't that much and for most purposes you can just approximate to 1,000 and it's close enough. And manufacturers just use 1,000 as their base for the numbers on the side of the box.

But as we moved into the realm of GB and now TB, those differences start adding up to be pretty significant.

I bought a "2.5 Terabyte" external hard drive recently. It's capacity? 2,500,491,998,184 bytes - 2.5 TB to the company that made it, but in fact only 2.27 TB in reality.

All those compounded 24's have now become a shortfall of about 230GB on what the packet says - a not insignificant amount of storage space which just a couple of years ago would have been the size of an external drive in itself.

It's not far off 10% of the drive's stated capacity short - which in my view is too much. If we were going to the petrol station and for every "litre" we paid for we were only getting 920mL, there'd be outrage.

So, back to my original question - how far will it go before people kick up a stink and manufacturers have to actually give you the amount of space they say they are?

 

[PykeDream]

Don'y they claim the rest is for storing system data?

 

[The Passenger]

very annoying issue, and probably should have been knocked on the head ages ago.

just stemmed from peoples inability to calculate binary numbers, and i dare suggest manufacturers saw a very convenient loophole to advertise more space than what they actually have in their products.

but now that storage has become greater and this issue has become more noticeable, if you put the amounts of storage into a spreadsheet, you'll see that as you go higher up the difference gets even more pronounced.

actual of amount of storage for 2 ^ 10 = 1024 bytes, is advertised as 10 ^ 3 = 1000 bytes (2.4 % difference)
2 ^ 20 = 1048576 is advertised as 10 ^ 6 = 1000000 (4.8 % difference)
2 ^ 30 = 1073741824 is advertised as 10 ^ 9 = 1000000000 (7.3% difference)

well you can see where it is going.

and a further issue has been caused by the actual byte amount being short changed. for instance the laptop i'm using now i bought was advertised at 250GB, but i only recieved ~237 billion bytes which equates to ~221 gigabytes, so i am getting even further short changed.

*****.

 

[The Passenger]

Don'y they claim the rest is for storing system data?

further more some is also lost in storing system data but that should be still be available to be seen in the total storage.

almost all storage units you buy will advertised for instance 250GB, and you'll recieved 250,000,000,000 bytes, which is equal to 232.83 GB

conveniently the manufacturers have used a base ten calculation (because that's what people know best) on what is actually a base two calculation.

and as i showed above, the higher you move up the chain the more the difference gets noticed as a % figure.

if the figures correlated and you were constantly 2.4% out, no one would notice and probably no one would complain.

 

[LadyPants]

All of the above and also would you rather be buying a 16GB iPhone or a 13.73GB one. It just sounds better.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

All of the above and also would you rather be buying a 16GB iPhone or a 13.73GB one. It just sounds better.

I don't really mind either way, I'd just like to get what it says on the box. If it says 13GB then fine.

Also, I have a brand new Porsche I can sell you for $20,000 if you're interested.*


*Actually it's a 1988 Datsun Stanza, but brand new Porsche sounds better

 

[Cruyff14]

Don't like it, don't buy it.

 

[obscura]

All to do with the formatting of the hard drive to a certain filesystem (FAT, NTFS, etc). As the person above said, you start with say 250 GB (An even number) but since each gb has 1024mb's, there has to be a certain amount of data lost to "catch up".

 

[George Washington]

All those compounded 24's have now become a shortfall of about 230GB on what the packet says - a not insignificant amount of storage space which just a couple of years ago would have been the size of an external drive in itself.

Uhhhhh... The percentage of difference is the same regardless of how big the drive is?

 

[prankmonkey]

and a further issue has been caused by the actual byte amount being short changed. for instance the laptop i'm using now i bought was advertised at 250GB, but i only recieved ~237 billion bytes which equates to ~221 gigabytes, so i am getting even further short changed.

*****.

you're not being short changed
laptops usually have a hidden recovery partition with the original image of hard disk. that 16gb is probably what stock windows plus bloatware would add up to

 

[Full Wingspan]

I don't know about you guys but I've always caught onto this and have strongly believed the company who manufactured the storage device was stealing from me.

Will always want the 14mb not included in my first 250mb usb.

 

[prankmonkey]

how many lay people will know that computers are on a base 2 system?
most people understand the prefixes and what they stand for, so when you're advertising it makes sense to just go with a base ten system instead of base 2.

 

[Simple Jack]

you're not being short changed
laptops usually have a hidden recovery partition with the original image of hard disk. that 16gb is probably what stock windows plus bloatware would add up to

I don't know where you're getting this from but you are being shortchanged.

They quite freely admit on the box 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes.

If there is any required software for the operation of the disk it comes out of the actual storage amount.

 

[prankmonkey]

^his post was about only getting 237 billion bytes instead of 250 billion. i was merely pointing out that the missing 13 billion bytes was from the system recovery partition which is hidden and not counted when checking space on windows. the quoted part was about an internal hard drive not an external one where there arent any hidden partitions

 

[Illinois Nazi]

Don't like it, don't buy it.

Fair enough. So you'd be happy if petrol pumps only gave you 900mL for every litre you paid for?

 

[Illinois Nazi]

Uhhhhh... The percentage of difference is the same regardless of how big the drive is?

Uhhhh... no it isn't.

In any case my point is about the raw amount of storage you're not getting. When the time comes to buy a 10TB hard drive, you're going to get barely 9TB on it.

 

[Underdog]

Fair enough. So you'd be happy if petrol pumps only gave you 900mL for every litre you paid for?

If it's the industry standard, I don't see the issue.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

how many lay people will know that computers are on a base 2 system?
most people understand the prefixes and what they stand for, so when you're advertising it makes sense to just go with a base ten system instead of base 2.

Surely it makes more sense to just put on the box what the actual size is?

I mean, I understand the whole base 2 vs base 10 thing, so when my actual capacity is smaller than what it says, I understand why. I don't like it, but I know why it happens.

What does the "lay person" who doesn't know anything about it think when they plug in their new 2.5TB drive and it says "2.27TB free"?

 

[Illinois Nazi]

If it's the industry standard, I don't see the issue.

You don't see the issue when the industry standard is to give you somewhere between 5 and 15% less than they say they are?

I'd certainly like to do business with you!

 

[George Washington]

Uhhhh... no it isn't.

In any case my point is about the raw amount of storage you're not getting. When the time comes to buy a 10TB hard drive, you're going to get barely 9TB on it.

The difference is hard drives see drives at 1000 bytes to a kilobyte, but windows 1024 right?

so if you have a 1 kilobyte hard drive.. you lose out on 24 bytes or 24/1000 0.024% right?

If you have a 1 terabyte hard drive you lose out on 24gb right.. still 0.024%. Or am I missing something?

 

[Underdog]

You don't see the issue when the industry standard is to give you somewhere between 5 and 15% less than they say they are?

I'd certainly like to do business with you!

Businesses do it all the time by charging in blocks of time.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

The difference is hard drives see drives at 1000 bytes to a kilobyte, but windows 1024 right?

Not entirely correct - Windows and the drive both see it as 1024. It's only the marketing person doing the packaging who sees it as 1000.

But yes, essentially that is the issue.

so if you have a 1 kilobyte hard drive.. you lose out on 24 bytes or 24/1000 0.024% right?

If you have a 1 terabyte hard drive you lose out on 24gb right.. still 0.024%. Or am I missing something?

But as you move through the magnitudes, it gets compounded - it's 1024 bytes to the kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes to the megabyte, 1024 megabytes to the gigagbyte, etc. The manufacturers just call all those 1024's 1000's, so the issue gets bigger as the drive gets bigger.

By the time you get to your 1 terabyte drive, you are actually missing out on over 90GB - more than 9%.

 

[prankmonkey]

Surely it makes more sense to just put on the box what the actual size is?

I mean, I understand the whole base 2 vs base 10 thing, so when my actual capacity is smaller than what it says, I understand why. I don't like it, but I know why it happens.

What does the "lay person" who doesn't know anything about it think when they plug in their new 2.5TB drive and it says "2.27TB free"?

i would believe it would come down to the psychology of recognising numbers and how we conceptualise what that number means. i'm not sure how someone not too tech savvy would conceptualise in their head what a 2TB drive would be useful for. that is why a lot of external hard drives give ideas about what that amount of data can hold: eg 80 000 songs, 4000 dvd quality movies etc.

also, why market something as 2.27TB (real data) when they can get away with advertising it as 2.5TB? its just like how food manufacturers are now downsizing the weight/size of food content in things like chocolate bars etc, while keeping essentially the same sized package. only now are we getting per unit based pricing on price tags at supermarkets

 

[The Passenger]

^his post was about only getting 237 billion bytes instead of 250 billion. i was merely pointing out that the missing 13 billion bytes was from the system recovery partition which is hidden and not counted when checking space on windows. the quoted part was about an internal hard drive not an external one where there arent any hidden partitions

fair enough. i knew there was system storage taken up by i assumed this would still be available on the total storage.

Uhhhhh... The percentage of difference is the same regardless of how big the drive is?

The difference is hard drives see drives at 1000 bytes to a kilobyte, but windows 1024 right?

so if you have a 1 kilobyte hard drive.. you lose out on 24 bytes or 24/1000 0.024% right?

If you have a 1 terabyte hard drive you lose out on 24gb right.. still 0.024%. Or am I missing something?

nope look at post 2... the further you move up in storage the further out the totals get.

kilobytes are measued as 2^10 (1,024 bytes), but their 1kb only equals 1000 bytes. (2.4% difference)

megabytes are measured as 2^20 (1,048,576 bytes) but the 1mb they advertise only equals 1,000,000 bytes (4.8 % difference)

gigabytes are measured as 2^30 (1,073,741,824 bytes) but the 1gb they advertise only gives you 1,000,000,000 bytes (7.3% difference)

terrabytes are measued as 2^40 (1,099,511,627,776 bytes) but the 1tb hard drive they advertise as 1tb will (as far as i've ever seen) only give you 1,000,000,000,000 bytes which is now pushing a 10% difference.

next will be petabytes, which are 2^50 (approximately 1,125,899,910,000,000 bytes), but when you buy a "1pb hard drive" you'll get 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes... now a 12.5% difference.

as i said, if it was a 2.4% difference the entire way through the each level of storage it wouldn't matter. well it should, but it wouldn't because it's just too much hassle.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

also, why market something as 2.27TB (real data) when they can get away with advertising it as 2.5TB?

I guess that really is the question - how long will they get away with it?

As Black Thunder's figures show, once we move up to petabytes, the difference between what they say and what you get gets up to 12.5%. How far can it go?

Maybe it's just a case of the people who understand it don't bother to complain about it, and the people who would complain don't understand it.