Hard drive size does matter. Lawsuit

I was wondering why we only had about 78gb on our 80 gb harddrive. What a new way to rip off consumers.

zdnet.com.com...

www.winxpnews.com... (2nd story)

True. Uninformed consumers will find a formatted drive's capacity is smaller than what is stated on the box.

I've known since I started computing about this, so I haven't given it much thought. However, its continued practice without a label on the box stating formatted capacity is deceptive marketing.

That's strange. I just bought a generic 100gb drive and it ended up being 114gb after formatting with NTFS. Do you think it's just certain manufacturers?

Originally posted by uIVIa
That's strange. I just bought a generic 100gb drive and it ended up being 114gb after formatting with NTFS. Do you think it's just certain manufacturers?

With hard drives, you can never get more capacity from formatting. It will only decrease in size. Whatever you bought was something beyond 100GB. Likely 120GB which formatted down to 114GB. Generic stock would probably allow for some variation in size and quality which is how yours ended up being larger. Retail and OEM drives from brand name manufacturers will never do that.

Unfortunately the wrong people are being sued.
80gb = 81920 MB
but the drive is actually only 80000 MB in size, and
80000/1024 = 78.125gb

Its the drive manufacturers that do it.

This going to go the same way as CRTs?

If it's the manufacturers who are being sued, will this morph into a mega lawsuit against manufacturers>?

i thought it was to do with bytes.. like 1024 bytes = 1kb.. but they count it as 1000 bytes witch when mounted up makes a difference when you have millions of bytes...

thats why say a 120gb drive is really only 114gb(dunno exact figs)


ect ect...

Runner, you are corrent, forgot to mention the 1000 part. Not sure where they use 1000 instead of 1024 to do their math. Ahh, here it is, right off the back of the box...
A MB is defined as 1,000,000 bytes
A GB is defined as 1,000,000,000 bytes

That works to screw ya in the end.

im sorry but having a lawsuit over at the most 10 missing GB is rediculous. If you want to sue some on sue Jet Blue airlines for giving out personal information on many of its customers to the government.

The whole computer industry really pisses me off. They always adveritise thier stuff at these really low prices. If you look really close (I mean really close) you will see that the actual price is usually about a fifth higher that what it says. They subtract every concieveable discount from the real price in order to make you think it is cheaper. What a rip-off.

Another instance of sue-happy wannabe nerds, anyone buying that size of disk should know that it equates the way crayon said.

We nerds dont like using easy numbers.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who dont.

"There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who dont."

Oh god I got that joke and actually laughed, I am so ashamed of my nerdiness.

hmm its surprising how much companies rip you off... in hard drives is one thing... ram stick are another nothing is really accurate with computer

U wanna hear a good rip, Coke, It cost them 7 cents to make, lable, pack and send a 2 Liter bottle... the cost about $2.50 where i live

I think its the principle of the thing, if you pay for a product then you expect it to work the way and to the specifications you ask for. We need test cases like this that hold manufacturers and retailers to account!without them we will all be taken for mugs!

Originally posted by Nerdling
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who dont.

But still, the big-name companies are *always* looking to rip us off by "nibbles" & "bytes"...

BTW, I always preferred to use hex-code...After all, it *is* the equivalent of "shorthand" for binary...

Originally posted by Mesmerized
U wanna hear a good rip, Coke, It cost them 7 cents to make, lable, pack and send a 2 Liter bottle... the cost about $2.50 where i live

...Does that also include the cost of nationwide TV advertising? After all, TV time is *very* expensive & you don't think they take that out of their *own* pockets, do you?

Hey well #, a 78 GB hard drive is still good as #. It's like getting mad that ur bottled water is Aquafina instead of Arrowhead.

Weed, man!... Talk about markup!