This is a common problem with measuring the capacity of a hard disk. The
advertising department of drive manufacturers wants the numbers to look big,
so they use the value of 1,000,000,000 to be a Gigabyte. The computer uses
the value of 1,073,741,824 for a Gigabyte. Thus 8.5GB in a computer becomes
9.1GB in advertising. The difference factor is 1.074. If you read the
specifications for the drive, you will find in the fine print that a G is
only 1,000,000,000.

===========================
Peter Shkabara, P.E.
Computer Science Instructor
Rogue Community College
[log in to unmask]
http://www2.rogue.cc/PShkabara

-----Original Message-----
I think I have seen explanation before, but I don't remember the details.
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 (e.g., 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???

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