# Computer makers sued over hard-drive size claims



## Stridder44 (Sep 18, 2003)

Check it here.  Personally, Im glad they're doing it. I hope they win. It's lame for them to advertise something that isn't.


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## Krevinek (Sep 18, 2003)

I hope it fails, and it will be an uphill battle. There is an actual REASON why this 'missing space' happens... It has to do with how OSes count Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera, etc... and how drive manufacturers count Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera. Drive manufacturing counts Kilo/Mega/Giga/Tera as factors of 1000 (10^3 is Kilo 10^6 is Mega, etc) which is accurate, but OSes count space different due to a trick to save CPU time on old machines. They count in factors of 1024 (2^10 is Kilo, 2^20 is Mega, etc). Because of this difference, what you see spewed back on the computer screen is less than what is written on the box you buy. 

To be honest, the wrong groups are being targetted with this lawsuit. Apple, Sun, Microsoft and others should be sued for making OSes that deceptively use 1024 when 1000 should be used for these standard prefixes. There have even been prefixes assigned for a counting system where Kilo = 1024 (Kibi, Mebi, Gibi, Tebi, etc)... but OS makers refuse to use them.

The drive manufacturers are advertising it just fine... so are the computer makers. Especially if you are smart enough to read the fine print on what 1 GB really equals. However, the OS is the one giving the false reading. 

Essentially, it boils down to the fact that you ARE getting what you are told you are getting, but the OS is counting what you have in a different manner, giving the illusion of less space.


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## Ricky (Sep 18, 2003)

I hope they win.  It's false advertising, to tell you the truth.  Yes, I am aware that HDs are measured in 1,000 MBs, but the average consumer doesn't.  You can't make up your own non-standard unit of measurement.


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## Arden (Sep 18, 2003)

Krev, you're facts are correct but your logic is flawed.  It is because the OS reads a drive as a factor of 2, not of 10 (1024 is a factor of 2, 1000 is a factor of 10) that the lawsuit should win.  Drive manufacturers should make their 150 GB drives 150 GB of 1024-byte KB, not 1000-byte KB... in other words, they should make them 161,061,273,600-byte drives, not 150,000,000,000-byte drives.  This is something that has bugged me for a long time, and it's nice to see someone doing something about it.


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## GroundZeroX (Sep 18, 2003)

I thought all of it had to do with how the file allocation tables are set up. When i was a Windows User, I remember getting more harddrive space out of a harddrive when going from Fat16 to Fat32. Thats because Fat16 only lets clusters of information in the size of I believe it was 16k. That means that if a file is like 36k, it would take up 48k. Fat32 made the data clusters smaller, allowing for much less data loss. I know conceptually a lot of this data is old, but back then, thats how it was explained to me that out of a whopping 2.0GB HD, only 1.8 was usable.


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## Stridder44 (Sep 19, 2003)

I bought a 10 gig iPod, and found out it was only 9.2 gigs. Thats almost a whole gig difference! It is not right.


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## Pengu (Sep 19, 2003)

The partition type will affect how much space is used as a minimum for each file. For instance, a HFS+ drive that is 2 Gig will show every file as being 4kilobytes or bigger. On a UFS drive of the same file, every file has a minimum size of 1 kilobyte. see how this could save you space? fat16/fat32 is the same sort of thing. so yes GroundZeroX, you are correct. But, the other issue is this:


> _from apple.com_
> 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less


The way computers work, they HAVE to use a binary system to store data. Why should apple go out and say, "this computer comes with a 18.6Gb HD", when every other compay using the EXACT SAME hard drive is calling it a 20 Gb hard drive. EVEN the manufacturers. And it is not misleading information. as shown above in the quote, apple shows, and i assume all other companies worth their salt show, that the FORMATTED capacity is less. If Joe Bloggs goes out and makes a computer system that works on a DECIMAL system, yippee for him, he can use a 20 Gb hard drive, and it will BE a 20 Gb hard drive.
I don't know if any of the americans here, or anywhere are aware, but the rest of the world recognizes the US as the land of sueing one another. These idiots are just out to make a quick buck.


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## Arden (Sep 19, 2003)

An HFS disk has a maximum of 65,536 allocation blocks.  To find the minimum size of a file on an HFS disk, you have to divide the capacity of your drive by 65,536.  Enter HFS+:  now you can determine the minimum size of allocation blocks.  With Apple's built-in tools, you're limited to 4 KB; with other tools, you can set the size of your allocation block anywhere from .5 KB to 8 or 16 KB (though why you'd set it to 16, I have no idea).

This is still a different issue, though, than the original post.  The topic isn't about the size of allocation blocks, but by the definition of a gigabyte.  Computer makers typically define a gigabyte as 1000 megabytes instead of 1024 to make their drives look bigger, and hopefully this lawsuit will change that practice.


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## Cat (Sep 19, 2003)

Actually, no. Harddisk makers define their HD's perfectly well. According to the International System of measurement units they are right: 1 GB = 1 billion bytes. That's the definition of Giga after all. Kilo = 1000 and not something else.
When you actually want to use a disk, you have to format it. In formatting you cannot but use base 2 numbers, so a 'kilo'byte takes up 1024 bytes instead of 1000. Therefore less 'kilo'bytes (and 'mega'bytes etc.) fit on the HD. 

Who's lying? Well, nobody actually. You just need to distinguish the base ten kilobyte from the base 2 'kilo'byte.

Compare to paper. On a A4 piece of paper would technically fit 100 lines. But in order to read the lines you need a wee bit of white space between the lines, so actually only 80 lines fit on the sheet. Same story. Or a glass of water. You can fill it to the rim (30cl), but mostly you don't (25cl). It's the difference between total maximum theoretical capacity and actual practical usability. As customer you should know these things and the companies do provide disclaimers, like  "actual formatted capacity less". *shrugs*


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## Arden (Sep 19, 2003)

And _I'm_ saying that they should distinguish between base-2 measurements and base-10 measurements, as are these people from Los Angeles.  As it stands, hard drive specifications are still misleading unless you look for the part saying that the actual capacity is not what it says it is.

The real difference is between size and capacity.  The size of a drive is what the manufacturer says it is, like 100 GB, 120 GB, etc.  The capacity is the actual amount of data the drive will hold, which is less than the size because this measurement is base-2.  Look at your System Profiler for proof.  The hard drive on this computer (the G3) has a 4.3 GB size, but only a 4 GB capacity.


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## Cat (Sep 19, 2003)

*shrugs again* Well, uh, yes that's what I said. You must distinguish between base 2 and base 10. Marketing _is_ misleading, however everybody plays by the rules: the size actually is 100GB, the formatted capacity is less. Manufacturers and Computer Companies say so. i don't really see the problem, nor a reason to sue anyone. It's not as if I can sue someone because I didn't pay attention or was ignorant.  

By the way, now that you mention the profiler. I think the whole argument is nonesense. Do Cmd-I on your HD. Capacity etc is in GB, used disk space is reported in GB and in actual bytes. Notice that not just the capacity but also the usage is in GB, so less than the actual theoretical max, BUT THE ACTUAL USAGE IS HIGHER. If capacity and use are both reported in base 2 GB and in actual bytes, and if the byte count is correctly higher than the base 2 GB, then it means that you don't really lose diskspace ...


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## fryke (Sep 19, 2003)

Stupid lawsuit. Stupid. Whatever the reasons, it's been like that since I was a freakin' little boy. And I'm 29 now. ;-) ... If they'd suddenly start to count in base 2 GB (the harddrive makers), I'd totally lose control! I buy a 160 GB drive, and in the back of my head I _KNOW_ that I won't see 160 GB free space in the Finder. Now if it were suddenly sold as a 150 GB drive, I'd expect less and buy from a vendor who still lies... ;-)

Let's tell those lawyers to get a life, shall we?


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## Pengu (Sep 19, 2003)

fryke, while I agree with you that the lawsuit is stupid, who says it was filed because they want it to change. The big companies (Dell, IBM, etc) may just pay them to make it go away.

I think I'll sue the top 10 Best Selling Authors on the planet for contributing to the destruction of forests around the world, and ultimately giving me (insert random disease caused by higher carbon dioxide here). Oh wait. THAT'S ridiculous. of course it is, it's just a way to make a quick buck or two(million)


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## GroundZeroX (Sep 19, 2003)

Pengu, I agree with you. The harddrive can easily stay 160GB, and they will never have any problems at all, just don't hook it up to a computer. This is just like the moron who sued because he got fat at Mc Donalds, or the lady who spilled coffee on herself, then sued Mc Donalds because her coffee was hot. The people who do these types of stupid lawsuits, are the people that make the US look bad.


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## brianleahy (Sep 19, 2003)

My two cents:

A lawsuit is a little extreme.  However, we *should* have a uniform standard to express drive capacities, and for that, we must standardize on a definition of mega/giga/tera etc.

Which version to standardize on?  There really isn't any choice: binary computers (and believe it or not, there *have* been digital, but non-binary computers in the past)  measure storage in powers of two.  They can't help it; any whole number of binary bits can express a maximum value that **is** a power of two (less one).

For this reason, computer storage of any kind has historically been measured in powers of two, not ten.  Humans are more flexible, we can alter the way we use words like giga and mega.  And when we are SPECIFICALLY referring to data storage:


1k = 1024
1Mb = 1k * 1k
1Gb = 1Mb * 1k
1Tb = 1Gb * 1k

My two cents.


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## chevy (Sep 19, 2003)

It reminds me the problems with CRT screen size.... 17" screen with 15.5" viewable area...

The difference between disk size and available size has nothing to do with 1000 or 1024 B in a kB. The difference would be just 2.4%... this has to do with formatting ! Before you use your drive, the OS writes some information on it to be able to follow the tracks... this takes bits and therfore reduces the free space for your data.


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## GroundZeroX (Sep 19, 2003)

I think I'm going to sue McDonalds because my quarter pounder with cheese isn't REALLY a quarter pounder after they cook it. If this law suite wins, I think I will win.


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## brianleahy (Sep 19, 2003)

Actually, by the time you get to gigabytes, the difference is 6.8%

1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1,073,741,824


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## chevy (Sep 19, 2003)

> _Originally posted by brianleahy _
> *Actually, by the time you get to gigabytes, the difference is 6.8%
> 
> 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1,073,741,824 *



Good point.

So basically as they are two definitions used, so one should mention which definition is used on each product.

http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html
mentions:
(2)_ 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.

So the definition is there, no discussion.


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## Arden (Sep 19, 2003)

Meow.


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## GroundZeroX (Sep 20, 2003)

woof


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## Stridder44 (Sep 20, 2003)

This is true. I agree with all you guys, and the lawsuite is very retarted, but I do wish that they would post true sizes. Like with the moniter thing above, they do show false sizes (like: 17 inch monitor...but only 16 inch viewable), but at least they show the true monitor size. I just wish they had true HD size somewhere as well...maybe it's just me. 

(BTW, don't get me wrong on the iPod thing. I LOVE my iPod and do not regret getting it at all)


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## Stridder44 (Sep 20, 2003)

Bahhh (sheep to go along with the animal noises)


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## buggerit (Sep 20, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Pengu _
> *I don't know if any of the americans here, or anywhere are aware, but the rest of the world recognizes the US as the land of sueing one another. These idiots are just out to make a quick buck. *


That is the truest statement.  One unfortunate (mis)conception of the USA is that one can never, ever underestimate the intelligence of the american buying public.

Whatever happened to good old solid intelligent people that take responsibility for their own actions?


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## pds (Sep 20, 2003)

Before we go there, an aside that is closer to the question of misreading megabytes.

I have a pdf I want to send by e-mail. Get info says it is 2.5 meg. OK, so it's big for the mail, but the guy wants it sooo...

When I queue it up in eudora, it turns out that what OsX calls 2.5 meg is actually 3,567 K and that's too big for the guy's mailbox.

So Apple gets it both ways, they call a million a meg when it serves and they call it .9 megs when it serves. 

Hey! where are my standards.

Still, I hope the lawsuit fails and the plaintiffs get to pay all court costs...


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## rbuenger (Sep 20, 2003)

The growth in size by sending it with e-mail has nothing to do with that. This is simply because normal e-mails only use 7-bytes instead of 8 bytes for a character in order to avoid using spezial chars.  So the e-mail programm has to convert your binary from 8 bytes/char to an ascii text using 7 bytes/char.  So the actually transfered data is 12,5% more. 

Of course the 1000/1024 display in the info dialog adds some extra bytes too


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## hulkaros (Sep 20, 2003)

I think people should sue Microsoft for their software which costs homes, sohos, companies LOADS of money each and every year for problems like security holes, crashes, etc. and should stop sueing other companies for BS computing details...


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## Jabberwocky (Sep 20, 2003)

This is all a complete waste of time and money and really has nothing to do with the actual size of the hard drives - if I bought a 10Gb drive and found it to be only 5Gb, I could understand but
some smart-Alecc has decided to make a point in law and scam the manufacturers for a few dollars as usual in Americas rediculously litiguous society.

This lawsuit is petty and just leads to items getting relabelled  - does this really need a class action lawsuit to change a label? Remember the case where a cup of coffee in McDonalds now has on the side "Caution contents are hot" No, really??? Shit, and I thought that steam coming off the top was just for decoration. Therewas another case where a lady successfully sued a department store and got about $800,000 because she tripped while shopping in the store and broke her ankle. I really cannot understand what precedent the judge thought he was setting when it was her own kid crawling on the floor that she tripped over! And like the McDonalds case, why did the judge award that woman so much money when she had clearly broken all laws of common sense and put the decoratively steaming cup of coffee between her legs while driving her car and oh what a surprise, spilled it.

I was on an American Airlines flight earlier this year and the stewardess gave me a packet of peanuts with my pre-dinner drink. The label said "Salted Peanuts" and there was even a picture of some peanuts on the packaging. Then to my shock, next to the ingredients table there was a warning sign: "Caution, may contain nuts"

WTF???

Surely not - a packet of peanuts that ACTUALLY contains peanuts. HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!


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## Krevinek (Sep 20, 2003)

> _Originally posted by arden _
> *Krev, you're facts are correct but your logic is flawed.  It is because the OS reads a drive as a factor of 2, not of 10 (1024 is a factor of 2, 1000 is a factor of 10) that the lawsuit should win.  Drive manufacturers should make their 150 GB drives 150 GB of 1024-byte KB, not 1000-byte KB... in other words, they should make them 161,061,273,600-byte drives, not 150,000,000,000-byte drives.  This is something that has bugged me for a long time, and it's nice to see someone doing something about it. *



Uhm, okay, a couple things... one: shouldn't you have said my facts were flawed and my logic sound? I was trying to point out that due to the difference between how an OS counts drive space, and how HD manufacturers count drive space was the real issue, and that these guys should be going after one of those two, not computer manufacturers. Dell, Sony and HPaq don't produce OSes (well, HPaq does have a Linux variant IIRC) or HDs... so why are they getting sued for giving numbers along the lines of the HD manufacturers? Toshiba produces HDs and uses the manufacturing numbers, which makes sense, but don't produce OSes IIRC, but rightly in the lawsuit. Apple produces an OS, but no HDs, so they are rightly in the lawsuit.

To be honest, the OS guys are the ones that need to change. A standard for prefixes that are in terms of 1024 HAS been out for about a year now (maybe less, my memory is foggy on the date)... 

Kibi = 1024
Mebi = 1024 * Kibi
Gibi = 1024 * Mebi
Tebi = 1024 * Gibi

etc... So either OS makers need to adjust to using the new prefixes, or stop using the stupid "shift the number left by 10 bits to divide by 1024" trick. It worked when we didn't have processing power and divides were done by hand, but now a shift is just barely faster than a divide (if at all faster), so we can actually divide by 1000 to give real size counts. 

It isn't that the OS HAS to count in powers of two... but they choose to use an old trick that was designed to save processing time.

Now, RAM manufacturers are being inaccurate too, since their KB is 1024 bytes.. but nobody cares since they don't see any loss.


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## fryke (Sep 20, 2003)

Actually, I think a KB quite clearly has 1024 bytes. Sure, it's dumb that the term 'K' or 'Kilo' has been used for bytes, but in computer terms it has been like that FOREVER. I mean: Since the beginning. What's the fuss? _I_ think people who suddenly started counting 1000 bytes in a KB are wrong, because they took something that was perfectly okay with everyone and _changed_ it. Not only is the lawsuit a dumb one, it will also only create MORE confusion instead of clearing things up. Aren't we, by now, USED to knowing that it's just like that? Sure, we could all live in a better world, but an American lawsuit about how American computer makers count KBs and MBs in harddrives won't change how Koreans label their DIMMs, for one example. And then what? You STILL have to learn that computers count differently, but while they do it in some places, they suddenly don't in others?

I say: Just another dumb lawsuit. There have been many of those in the United States of America, and there quite surely will be more, "just because we can".

I certainly think that the US law system is more flawed than the US harddrive and/or computer manufacturers.

Which reminds me that I'm a bit low on money right now. Maybe I should become an American and sue somebody so I get rich. I'm sure I'll find something really stupid with just enough chances to bring me money...


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## chevy (Sep 20, 2003)

After the trial, we'll see the 9.32 GB iPod, the 18.73 Gb and the new 35.987 GB.... That's information ! Isn't it ?

(and in small letters: BEWARE the iPod HD may contain bits)


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## Arden (Sep 22, 2003)

Fryke, I agree with you on the last point.


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## Krevinek (Sep 22, 2003)

> _Originally posted by fryke _
> *Which reminds me that I'm a bit low on money right now. Maybe I should become an American and sue somebody so I get rich. I'm sure I'll find something really stupid with just enough chances to bring me money... *



Actually, since this is a class-action lawsuit, those involved will probably see 25-50$ US each. The only people who get rich off class-action suits are the lawyers.

Now the really stupid lawsuits like the hot coffee inccident fits in the category you are describing as a get-rich-quick scheme.


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## mindbend (Sep 22, 2003)

In general I am against this sort of frivolous lawsuit, but I have to admit that I have been wanting some sort of imposed requirements for truth in advertising related to technology.

Things like:

printer speeds
toner consumpation
hard drive transfer rates
megabytes versus mebabits
(previously mentioned) monitor sizes

The list goes on and on...

These are all vaguely explained and depend on absurd laboratory requirements in some cases (hard drive transfer speeds). In my early video editing days I bought a hard drive RAID based on its claimed performance. Of course it turns out that claim was burst speed only, not sustained speed. The RAID was basically useless to me at a cost of $1700. That's just wrong. If you say your drive can move 20 MB per second, when it really only moves around 5 MB per second sustained, something is wrong  there. Car manufacturers don't claim their car goes 120 MPH, when it actually only goes 75. That was kind of a lame analogy, but imagine if other industries were as cockeyed about their data?

The question in this hard drive suit is whether or not consumers would have made other purchasing decisions had they known about the modest hit in actual available space. In other words. What are their damages? I would suspect that the real damages are none, because consumers would still have made the purchase as is.

So I guess in the end I"m against this particular suit, but I'm for some enforced clarity on these issues.


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## Arden (Sep 24, 2003)

To extend your car analogy, you could go 120 mph a time or two (a burst) on, maybe, the Autobahn, but it's very dangerous and bad for your car, so you usually drive at a safer speed of 65-80 mph (normal operation).


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## mindbend (Sep 24, 2003)

That's not a bad extension of the analogy. The key difference being, of course, that in the car example the advertising theoretically would not imply a certain sustained speed, whereas in the computer world it does. Likewise, in the car, if I really needed or wanted to go 150 I could, whereas the hard drive limits my speed with its own inadequacies.


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## Ripcord (Sep 24, 2003)

> _Originally posted by arden _
> *To extend your car analogy, you could go 120 mph a time or two (a burst) on, maybe, the Autobahn, but it's very dangerous and bad for your car, so you usually drive at a safer speed of 65-80 mph (normal operation). *



However, if your car only does 20mph under certain conditions (say, driving up a meager 1% grade hill), you might be a little miffed.

I'd actually say your analogy is a bit silly - the reason that a drive doesn't read/write at the same rate, sustained, as it is capable of in "bursts" has to do with architecture and limitations of the technology (caching, for one), not with whether or not it may damage the drive if done too much...


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