[Rant] Mismatch between advertised and formatted capacity

[theeldest]

I'm honestly surprised that stuff like this still happens:

If a person does enough research to purchase one of the fastest SSDs out there, is it too much to expect that they understand 120GB = 120,000,000,000 bytes = 111.8 GiB?

:shadedshu

 

[Albuquerque]

It's not an SSD thing, as it applies to any form of permanent storage. (spinning platter, flash ram, tape)

In support of your rant, i'm going to quote a reply I made in another forum on this same subject:

Kilo, Mega, Giga, and Peta were all base-10 numbers before they were base-2 digital numbers. If anyone has it right, it's technically the harddrive manufacturers.

Real World Examples:
1 kilogram = 10^3 grams = 1000 grams
1 kilobyte = 10^3 bytes = 1000 bytes (not 2^10 = 1024 bytes)
1 megapixel = 10^6 pixels = 1,000,000 pixels
1 megabyte = 10^6 bytes = 1,000,000 bytes (not 2^20 = 1,048,576 bytes)
1 gigaflop = 10^9 flops = 1,000,000,000 flops
1 gigabyte = 10^9 bytes = 1,000,000,000 bytes (not 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes)

This variance in base-2 versus base-10 is what gives people the perception that storage manufacturers are lying sacks. A 60GB harddrive / SSD device does indeed have 60 billion bytes of storage, but in base-2 form (Windows method of sizing) a 60GB device would need 64.4 billion bytes.

Yes, yes, I know, all of us old cronies (I'm certainly included in this) are very accustomed to seeing kilo, mega, giga and peta in base-2 form. But we were taught wrong RAM must be sized in base 2 increments for addressing reasons, but not physical storage.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

I'm honestly surprised that stuff like this still happens:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=47140&stc=1&d=1337114384

If a person does enough research to purchase one of the fastest SSDs out there, is it too much to expect that they understand 120GB = 120,000,000,000 bytes = 111.8 GiB?

:shadedshu

Yeah....

Gotta love the ignorance. Best yet, the owner cites their tech level as high. Obviously there is a problem there. This is why you read the reviews, and weed out incompetent responses before making a decision.

 

[EarthDog]

Not sure whats worse... the fact that what was posted happens, or that people even look at newegg reviews for ANYTHING in the first place outside of a laugh.

 

[theeldest]

Not sure whats worse... the fact that what was posted happens, or that people even look at newegg reviews for ANYTHING in the first place outside of a laugh.

*sigh*
I remember when NewEgg reviews used to be pretty useful and indicative of a product. They're just crap now. EVERY SINGLE PERSON lists their tech knowledge as High. Bulls**t.

NewEgg needs to implement a Karma system that gives some reviews more credit than others. Or at least an option to block specific users from influencing ratings that I see...

 

[EarthDog]

Karma will be whored out there like 'thanks' is whored out here making it useless, like it is here. Its best to read reviews of products from repuatble sites such as this one, or my home site, overclockers.com.

 

[dark2099]

I'll look at the # of reviews and read the worse ones to see what issues and how common they are, but otherwise, if I want to find out about something, I will look at reviews on tech websites/forums rather than a giant online store (you'd be able to trust the reviews when Newegg was only PC related, or mostly electronics).

 

[kn00tcn]

well, at least nobody is finding it helpful

blame the OS

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Not sure whats worse... the fact that what was posted happens, or that people even look at newegg reviews for ANYTHING in the first place outside of a laugh.

If you can't get useful information out of those reviews that's your loss. Read between the lines; there's plenty there to see.

 

[Steevo]

My raid card got horrible reviews as people don't understand that it hijacks your boot interrupt, and all you need is a floppy/USB stick with the tool on it and a basic understanding of how to use a computer to make it work as a storage only card.


Yet people were having issues with it hijacking their boot process, and the fact it runs in AHCI mode and your old POS IDE system can't be migrated directly to it and you don't know how to enable AHCI in windows......yeah, unfortunately people think if they can put the lever down on a processor and push in pins or a clip they are a computer tech.

 

[MN12BIRD]

The worst part is his tech level is 5/5? That's what pisses me off on there more than anything. I know more than half these clowns and I put a modest 4/5 as of course, not even I know everything! These morons who rate something low because they don't understand it, rant that's it's defective (yet leave you wondering what THEY did wrong) always seem to be experts.

F#$KING NEWBS!

 

[qubit]

I'm honestly surprised that stuff like this still happens:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=47140&stc=1&d=1337114384

If a person does enough research to purchase one of the fastest SSDs out there, is it too much to expect that they understand 120GB = 120,000,000,000 bytes = 111.8 GiB?

:shadedshu

Yeah, painful isn't it.

Still though, all hard drives hold odd sizes due to their round platters, so you can sort of understand HDD manufacturers quoting capacity in base 10. However, memory is physically bult in capacities that are powers of two, so have always been specified in base 2. This is why your 1GB RAM shows up as 1GB RAM in Windows and not something like 950MB.

Therefore, since SSDs are solid state memory like RAM, you'd also expect them to be built in capacities of powers of two and specified that way. Windows would then report a 128GB SSD with a formatted capacity of 125GB or whatever. Evidently, SSD makers are pulling the same base 10 stunt as HDD makers.

 

[Steevo]

Except they include some extra unseen to the user for failing or worn out nand. Much like HDD manufacturers. I hate downloading a 1MB file and finding its actually 1024bytes, I might have to pay more for my data since it was 1024, and size on the disk is 1300 bytes!!!!


Sue sue sue!!!