[X4U] External HD: 750 gig to 699 when formatted. Why???

[Michael Elliott]

Usually the boxes are pretty clear about the "formatted" vs. Byte  
count. Doubt there would be much room for a lawsuit!

________

Sent from my iPhone...so replies might be short, and sometimes  
"autocorrected" into gibberish.

On Jun 11, 2009, at 6:17 PM, "Randy B. Singer" <randy at macattorney.com>  
wrote:

>
> On May 24, 2009, at 10:27 AM, Germain M. wrote:
>
>> I bought a SimpleTech 750gig external HD. It was Windows formatted  
>> in the first place. Once mounted, info window showed the drive had  
>> 699 gig free. As suggested in the instruction manual (and as should  
>> be done) anyway), I reformated the drive Mac OS Extended journaled.  
>> Still 699 gig free. Is there a way te recover this huge amount of  
>> lost gig? What are they used for and by what (whom)? Are there some  
>> hidden Windows programs and files left on the HD. If so, how to et  
>> rid of them to recover that space?
>
>
> Most of that "lost space" was lost in the advertising department of  
> your hard drive's manufacturer.
>
> Manufacturers sell the drive based on a base 10 calculation of size:  
> 1GB=1000MB, 1MB=1000kb 1KB=1000bytes, etc.
>
> But hard drives are actually measured (formatted) in the real world  
> using a base 2 calculation like this: 1GB=1024MB, 1MB=1024kb,  
> 1KB=1024bytes, etc.
>
> So you're not really losing anything, it's just deceptive marketing.  
> 1GB actually equals 1073.741824MB, (1024(b)x1024(k)x1024(m)). So for  
> every GB you lose approximately 74MB.  So, for instance, a 120GB  
> drive, with a 74MB/GB "loss" should have 8880MB less when formatted,  
> or be about 111GB formatted.
>
> A 750GB drive should have a 55,500MB loss when formatted, for a  
> total formatted size of about 694.6GB.  You got off easy.
>
> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071212184510AAP3XoY
>
> This comes up all the time, and I've been surprised that after all  
> these years that there hasn't been a false advertising lawsuit over  
> this.  (There *was* a lawsuit over a similar situation in  
> advertising the size of computer monitors.)
>
> ___________________________________________
> Randy B. Singer
> Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)
>
> Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
> http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
> ___________________________________________
>
>
>
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