Wizard Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 Don't you hate how some hard drive and DVD-R manufacturers use 1000 for everything instead of 1024? For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the standard size of a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte and 1024 megabytes make up a gigabyte. Manufacturers like to use 1000 for all of those values. The difference? You actually getting shortchanged 24 kilobytes, which might not seem like a lot, but once it adds up, you could be short several gigs. Example: if you have a "100" gigabyte hard drive, that's 1000^3 actual kilobytes you have. When divided by the real size you have 1000^3/1024^3, which ends up to be 93 gigabytes. You lose 7 gigabytes just because they use a smaller denomination. That way, they can charge you more while providing you less storage space. Thoughtful replies are welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awesomegamer Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 It's because they know that most people don't know the difference between the metric system and the pseudo-metric system used by computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Posted March 17, 2008 Share Posted March 17, 2008 I always make sure that I'm getting the right amount of space...and of course companies will do that, it's any way to make an extra buck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awesomegamer Posted March 18, 2008 Share Posted March 18, 2008 Hey, just today at walmart, I saw a USB harddrive redefine Gigabyte to be 1,000,000,000 bytes. In parenthesis they stated a computer gigabyte is 2^30 bytes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wizard Posted March 19, 2008 Author Share Posted March 19, 2008 0Hey, just today at walmart, I saw a USB harddrive redefine Gigabyte to be 1,000,000,000 bytes. In parenthesis they stated a computer gigabyte is 2^30 bytes. Oh yah?! My flash drive is 8,000,000,000 bits! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh silly Posted March 19, 2008 Share Posted March 19, 2008 This may help explain. Kilobyte Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjpriest25 Posted March 19, 2008 Share Posted March 19, 2008 I think it's a good marketing idea by the developers of those storage devices. Hardly anyone realizes that they're being cheated out of all that memory. I couldn't figure out why I only had 82 of my hundred gb hard drive until last year. Part of it was because of a retarded backup system, but the rest was really never there at all! I think I have seen some that are actually the right number though...not sure though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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