An industry standard problem. Call it a con if you like. Hard drive manufacturers treat a Kb as 1,000 bytes wheras in point of fact it's 1,024. Extrapolate to 1Gb and you have 1,000,000,000 instead of the true figure of 1,073,741,824. If you divide 80,000,000,000 by that you get 74.5 Gb...
The true figure is produced by a mathematical figure of 2 to the 30th power; the HDD mfrs use the rounded off figure produced by 10 to the 9th power, because it makes their drives look larger. If you click open a harddrive and then click Properties, you will find two sets of capacities shown, one for each type
Whatever is the reason, it's totally misleading the customers. I was shocked to see that the system shows 74GB instead of 80GB. It's very basic and any kid can say that 1KB = 1024 Bytes. Why the heck HD manufactures follow some wired way to calculate the capacity? Is it not rediculus? Is it not cheating the customers?
As Kilo-, Mega- and Giga- are prefixes based on the Decimal system, a Kilobyte is, semantically if not technically speaking, 1000 bytes..... so the manufacturers are being strictly correct.
It still does come as a bit of a shock the first time - you get used to it. At the end of the day if by losing a theoretical 6Gb you are going to run out of disk space then 80Gb isn't big enough anyway.
Is it not Dell's responsibility to make aware of the customers the way KB is calculated? They should atleast mention this in the website or in the manual so that customers will not end up in surprise.
I buy laptop from Dell and Dell is responsible for all the components in the laptop. I'm least bothered about whether the HD is manufactured by Dell or some xyz. The resposibility lies with Dell as I buy laptop from Dell, not from some xyz.
Dell has mentioned it in some invisible and remote corner so that customers will not be able to read the info. It will make sense if the same info is published for each laptop model under “Hard Drive”, where the customers choose/configure Hard Drive size.
As previously advised this is an industry standard. All hard drive manufacturers and the computer manufacturers building PCs based on said products use it. If you're that hacked off :
1) try suing Dell. Have fun.
2) send your laptop back and buy someone elses - and see if they have a forum where you can complain fruitlessly to.........
The kilobyte = 1,000 bytes dates back to serially accessed data (such as punch cards) and the first hard drives used the same format, this is not some new trick the hard drive companies just came up with. The main difference is that today drives are so much bigger that the difference in what the OS reports is a lot more noticeable. Since the first hard drive was produced in the 50"s and DOS did not appear until 1979, why are the hard drive manufactures and PC makers to blame if software vendors do not use the time honored standards for measuring hard drives?
Dell is not dishonest. If you run chkdsk in a window you will see something like
C:\>CHKDSK
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume Serial Number is 232E-1CED
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
80,993,760 KB total disk space.
1,888,416 KB in 617 hidden files.
165,664 KB in 5,107 folders.
62,795,520 KB in 125,887 files.
18,198,240 KB are available.
However if you do Properties in XP it will show 74GB
Thats because the 1,048,576 = 1GIG for Microsoft but 1,000,000 = 1 gig for drive makers.
PartsGuru
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August 4th, 2006 10:00
leduke30
2 Intern
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4K Posts
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August 6th, 2006 17:00
JDaphne
6 Posts
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August 6th, 2006 23:00
PartsGuru
60 Posts
0
August 7th, 2006 08:00
You could argue the other way.......
As Kilo-, Mega- and Giga- are prefixes based on the Decimal system, a Kilobyte is, semantically if not technically speaking, 1000 bytes..... so the manufacturers are being strictly correct.
It still does come as a bit of a shock the first time - you get used to it. At the end of the day if by losing a theoretical 6Gb you are going to run out of disk space then 80Gb isn't big enough anyway.
JDaphne
6 Posts
0
August 7th, 2006 13:00
Is it not Dell's responsibility to make aware of the customers the way KB is calculated? They should atleast mention this in the website or in the manual so that customers will not end up in surprise.
I buy laptop from Dell and Dell is responsible for all the components in the laptop. I'm least bothered about whether the HD is manufactured by Dell or some xyz. The resposibility lies with Dell as I buy laptop from Dell, not from some xyz.
PartsGuru
60 Posts
0
August 7th, 2006 13:00
Dell in fact do state on the Website Laptop configurator ( for example ) the following footnote disclaimer:
For Hard Drives, GB means 1 Billion bytes ; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will be less.
JDaphne
6 Posts
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August 9th, 2006 18:00
I don't think Dell has mentioned anywhere about this.
Can you let me know the URL where this disclaimer is published?
PartsGuru
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August 10th, 2006 07:00
PartsGuru
60 Posts
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August 10th, 2006 12:00
JDaphne
6 Posts
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August 10th, 2006 12:00
Dell has mentioned it in some invisible and remote corner so that customers will not be able to read the info. It will make sense if the same info is published for each laptop model under “Hard Drive”, where the customers choose/configure Hard Drive size.
I still have doubt:
If 1GB = 1000 Bytes, 80GB = 80000 Bytes. i.e., 80000 /1024 = 78.125 GB.
So, I should get 78 GB if I order 80 GB Hard Drive. Why am I given 74 GB only?
Please clarify.
JDaphne
6 Posts
0
September 3rd, 2006 00:00
Dell hides this information from the customers. I didn't expect this dishonest act from DELL.
Message Edited by JDaphne on 09-02-200608:07 PM
Message Edited by JDaphne on 09-02-200609:06 PM
PartsGuru
60 Posts
0
September 12th, 2006 08:00
As previously advised this is an industry standard. All hard drive manufacturers and the computer manufacturers building PCs based on said products use it. If you're that hacked off :
1) try suing Dell. Have fun.
2) send your laptop back and buy someone elses - and see if they have a forum where you can complain fruitlessly to.........
DELL-Jimmy P
2 Intern
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1.5K Posts
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September 12th, 2006 18:00
speedstep
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47K Posts
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October 2nd, 2006 04:00
C:\>CHKDSK
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume Serial Number is 232E-1CED
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
80,993,760 KB total disk space.
1,888,416 KB in 617 hidden files.
165,664 KB in 5,107 folders.
62,795,520 KB in 125,887 files.
18,198,240 KB are available.
However if you do Properties in XP it will show 74GB
Thats because the 1,048,576 = 1GIG for Microsoft but 1,000,000 = 1 gig for drive makers.