[variozin]

My black C2D MB says the size of the "macintosh HD" 111GB.Apple says black MB has 120GB. So where the 9GB (120-111) gone???

[jtrwallace]

Whenever a hard drive size is listed it is always the pre-formatted size. If you look at the disclaimers of all Apple computers it will tell you "(1) 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." That is at the bottom of any Apple page that has a product with a storage capacity listed.

[analogika]

Please SEARCH THE FORUM before posting a new thread.

This question last got asked about three days ago.

The space lost through formatting is negligible.

What you are seeing is the difference between the fact that hard drive manufacturers sell hard drives as "1GB = 1 billion bytes", while the computer sees one gigabyte as 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes.

In fact,

120 marketing gigabytes * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 120,000,000,000 bytes
120,000,000,000 bytes / 1024 /1024 / 1024 = 111 real computer gigabytes

Why? I don't know.

Maybe because marketing droids don't do binary.

[mduell]

If Joe Average is at CompUSA and sees a 250GB hard drive and a 233GiB hard drive on the shelf for the same price, he's going to take the 17 "free" gigs. So all of the manufacturers have to play the same game to stay competitive.

[SLiMeX]

pwn3d

[analogika]

Originally Posted by mduell 

If Joe Average is at CompUSA and sees a 250GB hard drive and a 233GiB hard drive on the shelf for the same price, he's going to take the 17 "free" gigs. So all of the manufacturers have to play the same game to stay competitive.

If Joe Average goes home and finds that his 250GB drive actually only has 233GB, he is going to feel stiffed.

As we see on this forum alone EVERY THREE OR FOUR DAYS.

Explaining that he's not being disadvantaged because ALL hard drive makers do this doesn't explain WHY they all insist upon being the only ones to use incorrect measurement units.

It's sort of like gas stations using smaller "gallons" to sell their gasoline to me - it doesn't change my mileage or the size of my tank, and the playing field is level if everybody does it, but why the **** would they?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Explaining that he's not being disadvantaged because ALL hard drive makers do this doesn't explain WHY they all insist upon being the only ones to use incorrect measurement units.

Actually, I'd say it's the other way around. The hard drive manufacturers are using proper SI prefixes. The OS reporting tools should be using "KiB/MiB/GiB" if they want to report powers of 2 instead of 10.

[analogika]

Definitely.

However, the binary usage has been around quite a bit longer for hard drive space, specifically. I think in the last thread that asked this question - last week -, I asked the question why programmers, of all people, would choose a standard "kilo" prefix to mean 1024 instead of 1000.