How big is a gigabyte in hard drive advertising and packaging?
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From: mm on 7 Jul 2008 10:59 How big is a gigabyte in hard drive advertising and packaging? From another newsgroup, I suppose it's true: Coverage of a recent New Mexico Supreme Court case said that states were getting bold in finding excuses to void arbitration agreements under general state contract law and the U. S. Supreme Court was consistently refusing to review the state decisions. The New Mexico case was a class action suit against Dell for rating hard drive capacity in decimal instead of binary gigabytes. The class included people who ordered computers from Dell's web site. Dell requires users of their web site to agree to Texas law and arbitration of individual claims only. The artibtration clause and class action waiver are legal under Texas law. New Mexico law, the court decreed, includes a fundamental right to bring a class action. Class action arbitration was not possible under the rules in effect (though that may change) therefore the case could be tried in New Mexico state court. (It was one of those cases where I wanted both sides to lose. Dell, for making it practically impossible to get relief if they had actually done something wrong. The plaintiff, for caring about the trivial difference between 2^30 and 10^9.) -- end quote -- But someone else says the normal manner of business is to use 1,000,000,000 bytes for a gigabyte. I thought that formatted drives had fewer bytes capacity than unformatted drives, because of the overhead used by formatting** but that on the box and in the advertising for a hard drive, a gigabyte meant 1024^3. Is that true? **Space allowed for directory information is the only overhead I can think of. Is there more? If you are inclined to email me for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)
From: Rolf Blom on 7 Jul 2008 11:49 On 07/07/08 04:59 PM, mm wrote: > How big is a gigabyte in hard drive advertising and packaging? > > From another newsgroup, I suppose it's true: > > Coverage of a recent New Mexico Supreme Court case said that > states were getting bold in finding excuses to void arbitration > agreements under general state contract law and the U. S. Supreme > Court was consistently refusing to review the state decisions. > > The New Mexico case was a class action suit against Dell for > rating hard drive capacity in decimal instead of binary gigabytes. > The class included people who ordered computers from Dell's web > site. Dell requires users of their web site to agree to Texas law > and arbitration of individual claims only. The artibtration clause > and class action waiver are legal under Texas law. New Mexico law, > the court decreed, includes a fundamental right to bring a class > action. Class action arbitration was not possible under the rules > in effect (though that may change) therefore the case could be tried > in New Mexico state court. > > (It was one of those cases where I wanted both sides to lose. > Dell, for making it practically impossible to get relief if > they had actually done something wrong. The plaintiff, for > caring about the trivial difference between 2^30 and 10^9.) > -- end quote -- > > But someone else says the normal manner of business is to use > 1,000,000,000 bytes for a gigabyte. > > I thought that formatted drives had fewer bytes capacity than > unformatted drives, because of the overhead used by formatting** but > that on the box and in the advertising for a hard drive, a gigabyte > meant 1024^3. Is that true? > > > **Space allowed for directory information is the only overhead I can > think of. Is there more? > > > > If you are inclined to email me > for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-) This is a recurring confusion, and it has been a mix-up for many years now. There have been attempts at changing the prefixes, but those are not so widely spread or used. How many uses Kibi- or Gibi-bytes in specs today? IEC:s definition: http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm (If we only had eight fingers, I'd think that problem would not exist.) /Rolf
From: Rod Speed on 7 Jul 2008 13:09 mm <NOPSAMmm2005(a)bigfoot.com> wrote: > How big is a gigabyte in hard drive advertising and packaging? The SI standard decimal value. > From another newsgroup, I suppose it's true: > Coverage of a recent New Mexico Supreme Court case said > that states were getting bold in finding excuses to void arbitration > agreements under general state contract law and the U. S. Supreme > Court was consistently refusing to review the state decisions. Like it or lump it. > The New Mexico case was a class action suit against Dell for > rating hard drive capacity in decimal instead of binary gigabytes. Which hasnt got a hope in hell of succeeding even in the completely fucked US legal system. > The class included people who ordered computers from > Dell's web site. Dell requires users of their web site to > agree to Texas law and arbitration of individual claims only. They cant 'require' anything of the sort, legally. Thats pure bluff that only bluffs the legally pig ignorant. > The artibtration clause and class action waiver are legal under Texas > law. New Mexico law, the court decreed, includes a fundamental right > to bring a class action. Class action arbitration was not possible under > the rules in effect (though that may change) therefore the case could > be tried in New Mexico state court. > (It was one of those cases where I wanted both sides to lose. More fool you. > Dell, for making it practically impossible to get > relief if they had actually done something wrong. Wrong. > The plaintiff, for caring about the trivial difference between 2^30 and 10^9.) > -- end quote -- > But someone else says the normal manner of business is to use > 1,000,000,000 bytes for a gigabyte. And they are right. And its the SI standard too. > I thought that formatted drives had fewer bytes capacity than > unformatted drives, because of the overhead used by formatting** Irrelevant to what is being discussed, how the size before formatting is specified. > but that on the box and in the advertising for a > hard drive, a gigabyte meant 1024^3. Is that true? Its always true of the datasheet, it may or may not be true of the box and the advertising. > **Space allowed for directory information is the only overhead I can think of. Is there more? Yes, other stuff like the FAT etc.
From: Rod Speed on 7 Jul 2008 13:10 Rolf Blom <all.spam(a)round.bin> wrote: > On 07/07/08 04:59 PM, mm wrote: >> How big is a gigabyte in hard drive advertising and packaging? >> >> From another newsgroup, I suppose it's true: >> >> Coverage of a recent New Mexico Supreme Court case said that >> states were getting bold in finding excuses to void arbitration >> agreements under general state contract law and the U. S. Supreme >> Court was consistently refusing to review the state decisions. >> >> The New Mexico case was a class action suit against Dell for >> rating hard drive capacity in decimal instead of binary gigabytes. >> The class included people who ordered computers from Dell's web >> site. Dell requires users of their web site to agree to Texas law >> and arbitration of individual claims only. The artibtration clause >> and class action waiver are legal under Texas law. New Mexico law, >> the court decreed, includes a fundamental right to bring a class >> action. Class action arbitration was not possible under the rules >> in effect (though that may change) therefore the case could be tried >> in New Mexico state court. >> >> (It was one of those cases where I wanted both sides to lose. >> Dell, for making it practically impossible to get relief if >> they had actually done something wrong. The plaintiff, for >> caring about the trivial difference between 2^30 and 10^9.) >> -- end quote -- >> >> But someone else says the normal manner of business is to use >> 1,000,000,000 bytes for a gigabyte. >> >> I thought that formatted drives had fewer bytes capacity than >> unformatted drives, because of the overhead used by formatting** but >> that on the box and in the advertising for a hard drive, a gigabyte >> meant 1024^3. Is that true? >> >> >> **Space allowed for directory information is the only overhead I can >> think of. Is there more? >> >> >> >> If you are inclined to email me >> for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-) > > > This is a recurring confusion, and it has been a mix-up for many > years now. > > There have been attempts at changing the prefixes, but those are not > so widely spread or used. How many uses Kibi- or Gibi-bytes in specs > today? > > IEC:s definition: http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm > > (If we only had eight fingers, I'd think that problem would not exist.) Feel free to cut off two of yours and find that it still does.
From: Arno Wagner on 7 Jul 2008 20:36 Previously mm <NOPSAMmm2005(a)bigfoot.com> wrote: > How big is a gigabyte in hard drive advertising and packaging? > From another newsgroup, I suppose it's true: > Coverage of a recent New Mexico Supreme Court case said that > states were getting bold in finding excuses to void arbitration > agreements under general state contract law and the U. S. Supreme > Court was consistently refusing to review the state decisions. > The New Mexico case was a class action suit against Dell for > rating hard drive capacity in decimal instead of binary gigabytes. > The class included people who ordered computers from Dell's web > site. Dell requires users of their web site to agree to Texas law > and arbitration of individual claims only. The artibtration clause > and class action waiver are legal under Texas law. New Mexico law, > the court decreed, includes a fundamental right to bring a class > action. Class action arbitration was not possible under the rules > in effect (though that may change) therefore the case could be tried > in New Mexico state court. > (It was one of those cases where I wanted both sides to lose. > Dell, for making it practically impossible to get relief if > they had actually done something wrong. The plaintiff, for > caring about the trivial difference between 2^30 and 10^9.) > -- end quote -- > But someone else says the normal manner of business is to use > 1,000,000,000 bytes for a gigabyte. 1G<something> = 1'000'000'000<something>. That is SI and the law almost everywhere. The 1024*1024*1024 = 1GiB, but that is just a newer IEC standard, and not the law. HDD manufacturers are doing this right. A large fraction of the computing industry is doing it wrong, including Microsoft. The reason that lawsuit was ''sucessful'' is the general incompetence of juries and the emssed up state of the US legal system. 1GB is 10^9 bytes and has allways been that. The inaccurate value is 2^30. > I thought that formatted drives had fewer bytes capacity than > unformatted drives, because of the overhead used by formatting** but > that on the box and in the advertising for a hard drive, a gigabyte > meant 1024^3. Is that true? Not anymore. Also HDD vendors hal allways used the correct units. > **Space allowed for directory information is the only overhead I can > think of. Is there more? Actuually there is suync info, trach herade4r, sechor headers, sector ID fields, etc.. To give you an idea, a 2MB floppy formats to 1.44MB. Arno
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