I for one am in favor of the way manufacturers' list drive size, since it accurately
describes the number of bytes or characters that will fit on the drive.  Windows NT
always annoyed me by reporting in the gig format.  I can't agree with the video
monitor analogy.  The hard drive size issue is exactly the same as reporting length
in inches or millimeters, the two different terms refer to the same thing, drive capacity,
whereas monitor size and viewable area are separate and distinct.
Tom Turak

----------
From:   Herbert Graf
Sent:   Tuesday, May 04, 1999 1:07 PM
> I bought a 9.1GB drive and according to the specification it's 9.1GB
> formatted. But, after I formatted it, it showed up as only around
> 8.5GB. Do HD manufacturers use different scale system than most OSs,
> divided by 1000 instead of 1024 so their numbers are always bigger than the actual
> number shown on our system)? Why do they continue to do that if I rember
> the reason correctly? Similar to what they're required to do with Monitors
> (i.e., advertise 17 inch monitor, actual viewing size = 15.9 inch). Should
> HD manufacuturers be required to use 9.1GB formatted size, actual usable
> size = 8.5GB???

 Unfortunately all HD manufacturers still advertise their drives using 1 gig
= 1 x 10^9 bytes, the plain reason they do it is because humans consider
bigger is better, and all drive manufacturers would have to change at the
same time; one is not going to do it alone. I wish that government would
impose something, but how much do you want the government to control our
lives? I don't know, it would be more conveinient for them to market it
properly, but there is a difference between this and monitors. With
monitors, two different 14" models could have quite a varience of viewable
screen size, some were 12.8" and others 13.4", this was unfair because
although both were advertised as 14", the 12.8" viewable could be made
cheaper. That is why I believe the change was made. With HDs this is not the
case, 9gig from one manufacturer is exactly 9gig of another, there is little
variation, although both are not a true 9gig of data. It is because of this
that I don't believe anyone with impose a change. TTYL

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