Do you actually get the amount of space you pay for?

[MarcusHuddinge]

So i just watched the new Techquickie "What is SSD Overprovisioning?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q15wN8JC2L4 and i wanted to share my take on advertised size vs actual size and get some opinions on it:

I say that all my drives are the advertised size and that Windows just displays it incorrectly cause Microsoft are retarded.
If you go to This PC in explorer and look at the size of each drive it says "xxx GB/TB", but the numbers aren't in either gigabytes nor terabytes.
They're in gibibytes and tebibytes. But for some reason Microsoft shows GB/TB instead of GiB/TiB.

My 500 GB Samsung 850EVO shows as 464 GB. 500 GB in GiB = 464
My 240 GB WD Green shows as 223GB. 240 GB in GiB = 223
My 6 TB Seagate Ironwolf shows as 5,45 TB.  6 TB in TiB = 5,45
My 3 TB Seagate Expansion Drive shows as 2.72 TB. 3TB in TiB = 2,72

And if you check "Capacity" in each drives properties:
500 GB Samsung 850 EVO: 498689982464 byte (=498.689982 GB)
240 GB WD Green: 239921524736 byte (=239.921525 GB)
6 TB Seagate Ironwolf: 6001039241216 byte (=6.00103924 TB)
3 TB Seagate Expansion Drive: 3000457228288 byte (=3.00045723 TB)

So...  I'd say everything pretty much checks out and that Microsoft are just doing it wrong.

[Evolution.]

1 hour ago, MarcusHuddinge said:

00 GB Samsung 850 EVO: 498689982464 byte (=498.689982 GB)
240 GB WD Green: 239921524736 byte (=239.921525 GB)

Both those companies dont give the full storage only segate is honest 

[MarcusHuddinge]

30 minutes ago, VenomZ_ said:

Both those companies dont give the full storage only segate is honest 

The Samsung is my OS drive. It's got a 450 MB recovery partition, a 785 MB recovery partition and a 99 MB EFI system partition. That's 1334 MB which is 1334000000 byte. My C: partition is 498689982464 byte, 498689982464+1334000000=500023982464 byte which is 500.023982 GB.
And the WD Green is just 0.032698026% short of being exactly 240 GB which negligible, it's just 78.475264 MB.

But that's besides the point anyways. What i'm talking about is the 7-10% of storage that SEEMS to be missing due to Microsoft using the wrong units of measurement (GB/TB instead of GiB/TiB).
I guess a comparison could be a scale. Lets say the scale is in kilograms but someone scratches over the "KGs" and writes Lbs instead. You'll now think the thing the thing you're weighing weighs substantially less due to a pound weighing less than a kilogram, even though that's not the case, you're just being mislead.

[AshleyAshes]

Windows used to use the MiB/GiB/TiB abbreviations, I'm actually unsure when it was dropped though.

[MarcusHuddinge]

4 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Windows used to use the MiB/GiB/TiB abbreviations, I'm actually unsure when it was dropped though.

I don't understand how they can be smart enough to create the Windows operating systems, and at the same time be stupid enough to overlook something this basic.
It's like trying to use a 10 dollar bill to pay for something that costs 10 euro and go like "but they're both 10!!". Oh yea? But they're not worth the same.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, MarcusHuddinge said:

I don't understand how they can be smart enough to create the Windows operating systems, and at the same time be stupid enough to overlook something this basic.
It's like trying to use a 10 dollar bill to pay for something that costs 10 euro and go like "but they're both 10!!". Oh yea? But they're not worth the same.

Since it's something that they dropped, I don't think it's 'overlooked' but done for a specific reason.

[MarcusHuddinge]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

Since it's something that they dropped, I don't think it's 'overlooked' but done for a specific reason.

500 gigabyte is 500 gigabyte, 500 gigabyte is not 464 gigabyte, it is however 464 gibibyte. You can't just mix and match as you wish, there's no legit reason for doing so.
Microsoft is making people think HDD/SSD manufacturers are are lying to them about the size of the drives they're buying. They're making other companies look bad and making themselves look stupid (although i think most people nowadays just accept the incorrectly given reasons as to why you "get less" as a fact).

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, MarcusHuddinge said:

500 gigabyte is 500 gigabyte, 500 gigabyte is not 464 gigabyte, it is however 464 gibibyte. You can't just mix and match as you wish, there's no legit reason for doing so.
Microsoft is making people think HDD/SSD manufacturers are are lying to them about the size of the drives they're buying. They're making other companies look bad and making themselves look stupid (although i think most people nowadays just accept the incorrectly given reasons as to why you "get less" as a fact).

Well, it's important to understand that it's not inherently 'wrong'.  It just doesn't conform to IEC standards for the name of the unit of measurement.  Not conforming to an IEC standard is not 'wrong' it's just 'Not compliant with IEC standards'.  Similarly the JEDEC's own standards use 'Megabyte' and 'Gigabyte' and so on for the prefixing rather than the IEC's.

 

Also, no, it won't avoid confusion.  Because people always get confused.  Even this forum alone see's at least two threads a month where someone can't figure out why Steam 'only' downloads at '12 megs' on their '100 Meg connection'.  They don't understand the difference between 100 mbps and 12.5 MB/s.

 

I understand that it allows you to feel special to know that 'Windows is using the wrong unit' but even then it's just 'Windows doesn't conform to IEC binary prefix standards'.  It's not really much of an accomplishment.

[kirashi]

6 hours ago, MarcusHuddinge said:

The Samsung is my OS drive. It's got a 450 MB recovery partition, a 785 MB recovery partition and a 99 MB EFI system partition. That's 1334 MB which is 1334000000 byte. My C: partition is 498689982464 byte, 498689982464+1334000000=500023982464 byte which is 500.023982 GB.
And the WD Green is just 0.032698026% short of being exactly 240 GB which negligible, it's just 78.475264 MB.

Partitions have nothing to do with the actual number of sectors on the hard drive - the drive remains the same size as set by the factory no matter how you partition it.

 

However, I do indeed agreed that drives should be displayed as a whole rounded number simply out of logical reasoning. 465.9GB is just stupid.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

It's not that big a deal if you only use Windows.  However if you regularly switch back and forth between Windows and an OS that does get it right, it really begins to bother you indeed. 

 

I'd like to find a tool that corrects this, TBH.  Something that makes Windows replace MB, GB etc with MiB, GiB etc. 

To quote Jeremy Clarkson: "How hard can it be?"

 

8 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Well, it's important to understand that it's not inherently 'wrong'.  It just doesn't conform to IEC standards for the name of the unit of measurement.

There's a reason why these standards exist.  If you want to use certain measurements which are defined in a standard, at least make them comply to said standard.

 

If I want to sell a 3000m² piece of land, I just can't advertise it as 3200m² and then say "ah, but I don't adhere to the metric system's standards" when the buyer finds out that it's only 3000m². 

 

 

 

[AshleyAshes]

32 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

There's a reason why these standards exist.  If you want to use certain measurements which are defined in a standard, at least make them comply to said standard.

 

If I want to sell a 3000m² piece of land, I just can't advertise it as 3200m² and then say "ah, but I don't adhere to the metric system's standards" when the buyer finds out that it's only 3000m². 

This comparison doesn't work here when there's already conflicting standards.  Firstly, since the way Microsoft does it, this was once a customary way of binary prefixing prior to the IECs standard in the 1990s.  And even the JEDEC uses it's own standard that is different from the IECs.  But strangely, no one complains that their 8GB stick of RAM is actually larger than 8GB.

[dalekphalm]

8 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

This comparison doesn't work here when there's already conflicting standards.  Firstly, since the way Microsoft does it, this was once a customary way of binary prefixing prior to the IECs standard in the 1990s.  And even the JEDEC uses it's own standard that is different from the IECs.  But strangely, no one complains that their 8GB stick of RAM is actually larger than 8GB.

People are forgetting (or possibly never knew) that "Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes" was the 'standard' for decades. They informally used Mega, Kilo, Tera, etc, because they were more or less correct terms. However, these terms are officially part of the SI 10-base prefix standards, which is confusing to certain people and industries. They expect that a Megabyte = 1000 Kilobytes because in SI, Mega = 1000, not 1024.

 

So in the 90's they adopted the **bibyte (Kibi, Mebi, Gibi, Tebi (I think), etc), to differentiate between Mega = 1000 and Mebi = 1024.

 

To further complicate the issue, back when almost everyone in the Computer Industry was using Megabyte = 1024, HDD manufacturers came along and decided that Megabyte = 1000, so that they could advertise a "500GB" HDD without technically being false advertisement.

 

Since the 90's, some OS's have adopted the modern IEC standard, including Mac OS X, and I believe Linux. Windows, not so much. And even if Windows did change, there are other standards bodies, as you noted (JEDEC) that have yet to adopt the IEC standard.

 

Ideally, Windows would change to adopt MiB (1024 KiB) as the prefix (And still show MB as 1000 KB if appropriate), and IEC and JEDEC should standardize.

 

It's a complex issue, with no easy solution, and people who think there is an easy solution are ignoring 30+ years of history and context.