Hrad Drive capacity rant !

Darkst4r · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:34

Ok so I just bought a brand new Samsung Spinpoint F3 500gb Hard Drive. Wacked it in for a fresh install of Windows 7 only to find that it's ACTUAL capacity is 465gb :mad:

Now to me 35gb is a lot of lost space that I essentially paid for but didn't get. If I went to the shop for a pint of milk and paid for a pint of milk I damn well expect a pint of milk !

It's funny how HDD's are always under capacity and never over.

Does 35 missing gigabytes seem a lot of has anyone experienced such a loss in data capacity compared to the advertised ?

I wouldnt be bothered if it was 5 or so, but 35 ? seriously ?

rpstewart · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:24

You're not missing anything. You paid for 500Gb - 500x10^9 bytes and got 500x10^9 bytes.

The fact that Windows counts in Gibabytes (2^20 bytes) but uses a Gb rather than the correct Gib as the unit identifier is nothing to do with the hard drive manufacturer.

PhillyDee · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:53

Although I agree, rpstewart is correct, but Hard Drive manufacturers still exploit this and have done since the start!

jbloggs · 30 Apr 2010 at 15:01

Darkst4r said:
...Spinpoint F3 500gb Hard Drive...

Bought one of these a week or so ago...pretty decent HDD...

I wouldnt be bothered if it was 5 or so, but 35 ? seriously?

C'est la vie...

explicit4u · 30 Apr 2010 at 16:55

Try having a 931GB hard drive thats meant to be 1TB! It's always been like this so you should really expect it nowadays.

somewhatdamaged · 30 Apr 2010 at 17:27

Yep it's irritating but not unexpected. I am surprised that you're surprised.

colzboppo · 30 Apr 2010 at 17:55

My WD 500Gb HD has 598Gb capacity according to windows.

Darkst4r · 30 Apr 2010 at 18:56

somewhatdamaged said:
Yep it's irritating but not unexpected. I am surprised that you're surprised.

Well I havent bought a hard drive in about 6 years and the old one was STILL going ! As I remember hard drives were always a little bit under but never as much as I noticed today. Still, it is very quiet and about 4 times more space than I had.

Culinia · 30 Apr 2010 at 20:42

rpstewart said:
You're not missing anything. You paid for 500Gb - 500x10^9 bytes and got 500x10^9 bytes.

The fact that Windows counts in Gibabytes (2^20 bytes) but uses a Gb rather than the correct Gib as the unit identifier is nothing to do with the hard drive manufacturer.

Infact it has everything to do with the manufacturer referring to capacity in the (rounded) metric form instead of the 'proper' base 2 form.

E.g. Manufacturer states 600GB = 600,000,000,000 metric bytes (600,025,591,808 bytes in reality or ~558GB)

Guess it is marketing tactics making the drive look bigger then it really is, or because of the consumer love of rounded numbers?

fobose · 30 Apr 2010 at 22:15

I lost 140GB when I set up my 1.5TB RAID 1 array, windows reports 1.36TB