Other companies that make OS's do this too if im not mistaken (e.g. Apple and Linux) so You cant blame Microsoft solely for this problem

But, but . . . they started it!!!

Either way, I still think the lawsuit against Seagate is a load of tripe. Just how many people that were signed onto that lawsuit do you figure are more that 80% computer illiterate?

But, go and look at anyone who has been interested in PC's and hardware components that have been in the scene for a long while, and most of us understand why there is that difference, because it's been that way since WIN 3.11. And, c'mon, if you're still running IDE HDD's from 01, where I seriously doubt your total capacity if anything more than 150GB, and if your drive is actually still alive (yet another "highly doubtful"), it's a bit of a waste of time, IMO. And for those with newer HDDs, up to that 06 yeark mark, is missing out on a few dozen GB's really that important?

I don't blame Seagate, but I do get a lot of questions when I buy hard drives for other computer illiterate people in regards to this issue. I remember my dad asking my old computer technician why the 80GB hard drive was only 74.5GB :p.

imperialreignBut, but . . . they started it!!!

LOL:laugh::laugh: Apple has been around far longer than Microsoft ever has so that right there is a smack to your forehead:banghead: lol jk about the forehead

imperialreignEither way, I still think the lawsuit against Seagate is a load of tripe. Just how many people that were signed onto that lawsuit do you figure are more that 80% computer illiterate?

Hmmm Im willing to guess that 80% of those people were also computer illiterate

imperialreignAnd for those with newer HDDs, up to that 06 yeark mark, is missing out on a few dozen GB's really that important?

I know right but you gotta remember that as the numbers increase in size for harddrivew capacity the difference between the decimal and binary systems will widen evn further, gosh im scared to know how far off those new 1TB harddrives are off by in the computer OS's.

And also isnt the Binary system the correct way to do everything for computers? That was what I always thought. Isnt binary part of the metric system while decimal is part of the American measuring system that has yet to be fully converted over to Metric?

LOL Apple has been around far longer than Microsoft ever has so that right there is a smack to your forehead lol jk about the forehead

yeah, but MS' popularity is what ened up pole-vaulting this whole issue in the first place.

I know right but you gotta remember that as the numbers increase in size for harddrivew capacity the difference between the decimal and binary systems will widen evn further, gosh im scared to know how far off those new 1TB harddrives are off by in the computer OS's.

And also isnt the Binary system the correct way to do everything for computers? That was what I always thought. Isnt binary part of the metric system while decimal is part of the American measuring system that has yet to be fully converted over to Metric?

I completely agree, but I really don't see the hardware manufacturers changing what they label the HDD as. Just because WIN is off by a coupla gig doesn't mean that a Linux based system or MAC system is going to read it that way. Again I really don't think SG is to blame, at all - I mean, if you're going to hold SG accountable for their HDD labeling, you need to also stick it to Western Digital, Maxtor, Hitachi and all the other big HDD makers.

Binary is defi the correct way to do everything for a computer - considering that at the very basic of any hardware language it's all 0s and 1s.
Decimal is just another form of numeric representation based on the number 10. It's also commonly used with computers. The biggest reason decimal started being used with computers is that binary is the hardware language - but, it's very difficult for humans to read straight binary code, so hexadecimal was introduced to represent strings of binary code. Hexadecimal is a lot easier to read than binary, but again, when counting the number of bytes, etc, it can still be hard to interpret, so it's then converted to decimal and assigned either a letter/number or symbol (which became ASCII).

Years ago, back in HS, I wrote a basic C++ program that would go through a .txt file and convert all the letters/numbers/symbols into ASCII decimal, then convert that to hex, and finally convert that to binary. Granted, it quadrupled the size of the file, but it was pretty neat for only 13 lines of code and only one algebraic equation. Somewhere I still have the equation I came up with to do that . . .

imperialreignyeah, but MS' popularity is what ened up pole-vaulting this whole issue in the first place.

So your going to blame Microsoft for this after they copied what Apple did? Thats just shameful:shadedshu:shadedshu:shadedshu

imperialreignBinary is defi the correct way to do everything for a computer - considering that at the very basic of any hardware language it's all 0s and 1s.

Then why is it that these harddrive companies are so ignorant and want to only use decimal instead of binary which is the correct way on how to do it?

And just so you know thanks for giving that explanation on what decimal is but I already knew that lol:roll::roll::roll:.

And it is not hard for humans to read binary code, no harder than them figuring out that two sticks of ram each one having 512 MB on it would equal 1 GB:toast:;) I think that is a slap to a consumers knowledge that should be reversed to the harddrive companies for thinking that they were the only hardware manufacturers that needed to do their size in decimal form rather than in binary GOD THEY ARE IDIOTS EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM:slap::slap:

So your going to blame Microsoft for this after they copied what Apple did? Thats just shameful

well, aside from wanting to blame MS "just because" :)

the blame, IMO, should be equal between the HDD manufacturers and MS. The HDD itself has x number of bytes of information available, it's how the OS interprets those numbers that has lead to all the confusion. As I said before, I can't see an HDD manuf individually labeling their products based on what OS x says it holds, because then they'd get slapped with a lawsuit by the OS designer. I mean, (and this is an exaggeration) say Western Digital goeas and labels a 160GB HDD as: WIN XP 149GB, MAC 152 GB, Redhat 153GB - how many people would either, a.) not buy said HDD or, b.) install Redhat because it offers more HDD space than the other two OSes?

Why penalize the HDD maker when their labeling tells you exactly how many bytes of information the HDD can hold -

plus, taking also into consideration partition size on a HDD. Say someone goes and buys a newer disk, and then uses any 'driver copying' utilities that came with the HDD to move all their files from their old drive to the one they just bought, they usually move partition info, too. If you have 10GB partitioned out for DOS or system or RESTORE use, WIN can't look at that either, and makes the total HDD capacity look smaller than it really is.



They've just been stuck between a rock and a hard place, IMO - it's just nowadays there are so many uneducated (in general) people in the US looking to make a quick buck on something that it comes to class action law suits like this

imperialreignI mean, (and this is an exaggeration) say Western Digital goeas and labels a 160GB HDD as: WIN XP 149GB, MAC 152 GB, Redhat 153GB - how many people would either, a.) not buy said HDD or, b.) install Redhat because it offers more HDD space than the other two OSes?

Im confused I though all OS's used the same binary system so why would one OS suddenly recognize one drive as having more GB's in it than another OS says it has?

Is there more than one kind of binary system or something?

imperialreignI mean, if you're going to hold SG accountable for their HDD labeling, you need to also stick it to Western Digital, Maxtor, Hitachi and all the other big HDD makers.

Western Digital dealt with a lawsuit over this exact same thing about a year ago. As I recall the only thing you got out of the settlement was their crappy backup software.

Is there more than one kind of binary system or something?

no, not at all - just mentioning that not all OSes always count the same way. Take, for example, MS - even though WIN typically reports the size of you HDD to be under what is labeled on the box, MEM is typically counted higher. 1GB of RAM is 1000KB, but it's usually counted as 1024KB . . .

. . .


. . .

come to think of it - now I'm starting to get a little confused over this . . . let me think on it some, as I just got home from work

Some disk formats do take more of the disk as its own, but the storage could be represented two ways.



A file that is 1,024Kb on windows might be an actual 1,096Kb on the disk due to cluster size, a option in formatting, however in Linux depending on formatting it might be 1,045Kb.




This it stupid, and shows how stupid people are.

sorry about the confusion effmaster, I think I had been describing it wrong. Anyways, this is round-abouts what I was trying to describe;

from wikipedia:

The capacity of an HDD can be calculated by multiplying the number of cylinders by the number of heads by the number of sectors by the number of bytes/sector (most commonly 512). On ATA drives bigger than 8 gigabytes, the values are set to 16383 cylinder, 16 heads, 63 sectors for compatibility with older operating systems. It should be noted that the values for cylinder, head & sector reported by a modern drive are not the actual physical parameters since, amongst other things, with zone bit recording the number of sectors varies by zone.

Hard disk drive manufacturers specify disk capacity using the SI prefixes mega, giga, and tera and their abbreviations M, G and T, respectively. Byte is typically abbreviated B.

Operating systems frequently report capacity using the same abbreviations but in reference to binary-based units. For instance, the prefix mega in the context of data storage can mean 220 (1,048,576), which is approximately equal to the actual value of the SI prefix mega, 106 (1,000,000). Similar usage has been applied to prefixes of greater magnitude. This results in a discrepancy between the disk manufacturer's stated capacity and the apparent capacity of the drive when examined from the operating system. The difference becomes much more noticeable in the multi-gigabyte range. For example, Microsoft Windows reports disk capacity both in decimal-based units to 12 or more significant digits and with binary-based units to 3 significant digits. Thus a disk specified by a disk manufacturer as a 30 GB disk might have its capacity reported by Windows 2000 both as "30,065,098,568 bytes" and "28.0 GB" The disk manufacturer used the SI definition of "giga", 109 to arrive at 30 GB; however, because the utilities provided by Windows define a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes (230 bytes, often referred to as a gibibyte, or GiB), the operating system reports capacity of the disk drive as 28.0 GB.

Thanks But indeed that is a long winded and hard to understand explanation without re-reading it 2 or 3 times:roll::roll::roll:

I have used seagate all my life and im trust them, i have like 10 HDD'S of seagate and i would be interested to have some refund because i would get around 50 $ and i could buy a new one lol. I live in Spain, Do you know if there is any chance to have a refund? Did anyone try it and got the money? Thanks