Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Size Claims

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A group of computer owners has filed a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest makers of personal computers, claiming that their advertising deceptively overstates the true capacity of their hard drives.

The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed earlier this week in Los Angeles Superior Court against Apple Computer Inc., Dell Inc., Gateway Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Sharp Corp., Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp. The lawsuit brought by Los Angeles residents Lanchau Dan, Adam Selkowitz, Tim Swan and John Zahabian centers around the way that computer hard drives are described by manufacturers.

Representatives of the eight defendants were not immediately available to comment. According to the lawsuit, computer hard drive capacities are described in promotional material in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system. The result is that a hard drive described as being 20 gigabytes would actually have only 18.6 gigabytes of readable capacity, the lawsuit said. The plaintiffs said this difference in convention is deceptive and leaves buyers with less storage than they thought they were getting when they purchased their computers.

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(1 reply) #1 Homie on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:57

This is the same thing as labeling things $99.99. It seems cheaper than 100 dollars doesnt it?

#1.1 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 09:44

Uh. no. Not quite... this is more like labelling something 10,000 c when this is the same as $100 which looks like less..

#2 georgi55 on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:00

Finally some movement.

#3 Gary_Player on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:00

My 120gig HD only has 114 gig capacity and my 40 gig has a 37.2 gig capacity
Raw, unformatted space is...i dont remember...

#4 xEonBuRn on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:01

About time someone took charge... that is so annoying when they do that... of course there is probably nothing anyone can do about it.

#5 Tai on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:03

goodie

but lets be more effective and make it a global class action suit ..

Where do I sign up ?

#6 pjak on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:04

this is the old problem of users vs. makers, reality vs. marketing, the classic of 1024 bytes = 1 kb vs. 1000 bytes = 1 kb, right??

but is suing the right thing, as every computer (and storage device) ever made is affected, so is every computer-related company to be sued??

Last edited by 7205 on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:10

(1 reply) #7 xStainDx on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:05

This lawsuit will be dropped because its being filed stupidly against the wrong people.

boy and I need to go to law school for this?

The lawsuit should be targeting all Drive Makers and not OEM's themselves.

Gateway, Dell and Etc just buy the drives from the Hard Drive manufactureres and sell them as they state them as.

Fault = Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu and any of the other ones I may have missed.

#7.1 briangw on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:09

I agree. Most of the documentation has asteriks at the end of the size, explaining that the drive advertised is actually less. I hope this pos gets thrown out of court.

#8 Rishdeep on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:06

I just got my laptop today. Advertised 60gig but only had 55. *******s.

#9 Evolution on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:09

perhaps you should have expected it? or at the very least check what the actual spec are. Keep in mind that windows also hides some of the space away from the pie chart.

(1 reply) #10 zivan56 on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:15

LOL, I'm going sue AMD because my 2600+ is slower than 2.6ghz

#10.1 iczman on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:51

this isn't the same thing, 2600+ is AMD's PR rating, it doesn't say it's running at 2.6GHz.
in fact most retailer will include a small print to inform AMD CPU's actual GHz

(4 replies) #11 semifamous on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:32

It all comes down the math. at hard drive advertised as having 120 gigs actually has 120,000,000,000 bytes.

Unfortunatley, in order to figoure out how many REAL gigabytes that its, you must first find out how many kilobytes that is.

Divide 120 billion by 1024 (NOT 1000!!!) and you get 117187500kilobytes

Divide that by 1024 and you have 114440.91796875

Divide that number by 1024 again to find out how many gigs there are: 111.758708953857421875

Which is actually less than the 120 that was advertised. It's all funny math. technically 120 billion bytes *is* 120 gigabytes, but only on a base 10 system, not the base 2 system computers use.

#11.1 sodapop on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:44

Yeah, Um...You lost me there chief from the word "it".

#11.2 roadwarrior on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:33

If he lost you on that, do you really have an business on a semi-technical site like this?

#11.3 ricknl on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:02

The world would be a better place if they hadn't made that 'mistake' when they named 1024 bytes as a kilobyte. As most of you would know, kilo is a Latin word and it is used for 1000 (e.g. a kilogram - 1000 grams). It is not 999, 1011, 1007 or 1024 but simply 1000.

Nothing had stopped them from naming 1024 bytes as something different like lalobyte, migobyte.. whatever.

#11.4 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:04

Unfortunately "giga" is an SI prefix. SI units are normally for base 10. The base 2 definition of "giga" is actually hijacked and incorrect. Go look at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

#12 linsook on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:35

finally.

#13 Mav Phoenix on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:41

(1 reply) #14 sodapop on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:43

Good, Now when are they going to sue the printer makers for high ink?

#14.1 CoLdFuSi0n on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:02

someone should sue them.

(1 reply) #15 Samoa on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:03

Good I'm tired of the false advertising also. My maxtor has 120gig, approx 122gig of useable space. Sick and tired of the false advertising.

#15.1 ike on 19 Sep 2003 - 03:28

i think you've got a typo there sir

(2 replies) #16 nhut on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:19

Hope this gets thrown out of court. I've never seen an ad for a HDD which doesn't point out that the actual size is different in the fine print.

Caveat emptor.

#16.1 divertom15 on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:31

i agree when i saw this i started thinking that too i have never seen were it wasnt in fine print that the actuall capacity is less

didnt we all learn early on it has to be divided into traks and sectors? that takes up space to, and the file allocattion table or whatever NTFS has that takes up space too, and files not taking up the full cluster so the rest of the cluster it useless takes up space

should i go on

and there is probaly something i missed so someone will sarcasticly reply and add that to what ive said

#16.2 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:00

The difference being argued in this suit is between the Windows definition of a gigabyte being 2^30 bytes (incorrect actually), and the SI definition, used by hdd manufacturers (correct), which is 10^9 bytes.

The taking up of space by MBR and NTFS / FAT is also a valid issue, but has less impact on the apparent difference between quoted and actual size experienced by users.

#17 fubarshibby on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:26

Boo Hoo... Wow there's so much space you lose << sarcasm

What does it really matter? This is so incredibly ridiculous that I just want to slap the guys that are suing. Even if it weren't in the fine print, it would still be ridiculous...

(2 replies) #18 Martog on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:30

What I dislike more than this (and I really dislike using two different numbering systems, lets stick to one) is that newer computers have the restore files on the hard drive and do not include a restore disc, thus making the usable space lower to the end user who does not suspect a thing. Does it cost that much more to make a disc for it? =/ My Dell laptop has like so many restore discs, but I do not care, at least I know the hard drive isn't being eaten up by restore crap.

#18.1 divertom15 on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:43

Im glad my HP lappy came with the restore disks (full os and apps) + i got a xp home full os disk

but if you want to go MS technical they say your buying a lisence and not a cd so they dont "owe" you a picece of plastic

#18.2 Conundrummm on 19 Sep 2003 - 21:16

I recently bought a HP Pavillion that was advertised as having a 40 GB hard drive. Turns out, there is only 32 GB of usable space. 32 GB on the user partition, 5.26 GB for restore and 2.74 GB in invisible land. No restore disks. The hard drive is like a big commercial for any company willing to pay HP a dime. There are full versions of programs like Quicken that can't be used without ponying up payment first. There are demos of useless apps that the average user would never want. Not to mention the 'special offers'. Some of these apps take up more than 500 MB by themselves. All of this coming from the 32 GB that was supposed to be 40 GB. Oh, and also the additional gigabytes that everyone else is missing.

I say they should be sued for both the missing space and for locking away large portions of the hard drive space they do provide.

#19 Corosus on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:40

Whoever rounded 1 kilobyte to 1000 bytes for this should be tortured, shot, then killled.

#20 dataschmuck on 19 Sep 2003 - 02:46

It was Bill Gates!!!

#21 ike on 19 Sep 2003 - 03:29

maybe they'll start making the drives a little differently, hmmmm?

(2 replies) #22 Mr. Black on 19 Sep 2003 - 03:47

I don't think there is anything deceptive about it - it's the truth. The unformatted capacity of the drive IS 20.0MB, henceforth yes you are getting a 20GB HDD...however, when it is formatted, it becomes 18.6 or whatever...I think this lawsuit is stupid.

#22.1 Miran on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:00

I don't think that is quite what they are saying..

#22.2 Oogle on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:22

2^30 bytes is 1 GB
10^9 bytes is not 1 GB

That's what the suit's about. We're getting ripped off because we like to use the decimal system.

#23 tootsie2 on 19 Sep 2003 - 03:58

quite silly.

(7 replies) #24 Starman on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:29

The lawsuit is stupid. I knew about this ages ago, and accepted it. Every file system's different, and yields different results. What should drive manufacturers do...this?

120GB RAW
114 GB NTFS
114 GB MacOS X
112 GB FAT
116 GB Linux (I forgot the file system type)
115 GB if you happen to use Be
116 GB if you throw it in yout TiVo

etc.

Again, stupid.

#24.1 Oogle on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:41

It has nothing to do with filesystems. It has to do with measurement. Imagine being charged 50£ (UK) for a game just because publishers thought U.S. dollars and U.K. pounds were the same thing. That's what's happening here.

#24.2 roadwarrior on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:42

It has absolutely nothing to do with formatting. It has everything to do with drive manufacturers saying 1,000,000,000 bytes is 1 GB, which it isn't. They have been doing this for years, and if I remember right, it's not the first time some of them have gotten sued over this. I believe that the first decision was that they had to state that they measure bytes differently than the operating system does (which they usually put in VERY fine print, sometimes in text colors that don't contrast well with the page either). Why the drive makers can't just be straightforward about this is beyond me. Something similar happened to monitor makers years ago, because they were selling monitors by the tube size, not by visible size. That's why you now have that fine print in the ads that tell you what the viewable size is. It was also supposed to keep them from using the tube size as a part of the monitor's model number, but from what I've seen, they don't live up to this part of the lawsuit anymore

#24.3 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 07:47

QUOTE

It has everything to do with drive manufacturers saying 1,000,000,000 bytes is 1 GB, which it isn't.

Yes it is. K is not 2^10, it is 10^3. 2^10 is a terrible legacy from some moron software / hardware designer who hijacked and broke SI units.

#24.4 chris_kabuki on 19 Sep 2003 - 07:55

"Wrath Delivery": The moron designer of the switch? of computers? riiiight! In computer terms everything has always been in base 2, not base 10. That's how it has always been until marketing decided to kick in and change things.

When you buy a HDD, the size is calculated in decimal....
When you buy RAM, the size is calculated in binary! 256MB RAM is 256MB binary
CD's are calculated in binary... 80min cd, 700MB is 700MB binary (736MB decimal)
DVD's are calculated in decimal... 4.7GB decimal ~= 4.3GB binary

Things are currently all over the place depending on what you are buying!

#24.5 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 09:33

Ok, i agree thats not entirely fair. He wasn't a moron. But I still believe the SI unit was misappropriated so to speak. Kilo means 1000, end of story. Changing it is like taking a mile or a pound and deciding that we're going to redefine it when we go colonise mars or something, just because its more convenient over there. Of course I think we should all switch over to metric anyway...

#24.6 mrbester on 19 Sep 2003 - 11:08

Except K doesn't mean kilo Mr Metric. k does. The case makes all the difference. K is indeed 2^10. k is indeed 10^3. K was introduced as it was fairly close to k (24 bytes difference). Perhaps you'd like kilometres and miles to be ratified, after all it's only 45 metres difference between 8 kilometers and 5 miles after all. Agreed, the errors started occurring when it came to M, and already established unit, but it was implicit (and bloody obvious if you were referrring to binary storage) that it mean K^2 not k^2. What else is measured using Mega (or higher) except for nominal yield of nuclear devices? Only some maths paper checking you know what the decimal is by saying "write down 200 kilometres in centimetres". Same goes for G(iga).

#24.7 RangerLG on 19 Sep 2003 - 15:57

I thought K was the temperature designation for Kelvin. But that is another story.

(3 replies) #25 underthebridge on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:51

You are guys are all wrong! Like semifamous said, it has nothing to do with formatted capacity.

For example,

A hard drive maker will market his drive as 200 GB, but it is not *true* GB because in his definition, 200 GB = 200 x 10^9 Bytes = 200,000,000,000 Bytes. He has used Base10.

But computers read space using Base2 (2^10 = 1024).
200 GB = (200 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024) Bytes = 214,748,364,800 Bytes

The difference between using Base2 (the computer's method) and Base10 (the marketer's method) is:
214,748,364,800 - 200,000,000,000 = 14,748,364,800 Bytes

Convert Bytes back to GB, and you get:
14,748,364,800 Bytes / 1024 = 14,402,700 KB = 14065 MB = 13.74 GB,

So you are LOSING 13.74 GB of space just because of DRIVE MARKETING (yes they think they can cheat you by using base 10 instead of 2, thinking that no one will know the difference).

Let me stress once again: It has NOTHING/ZERO/ZILCH to do with formatting/raw data/whatever you want to call it.

#25.1 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 07:45

Quite frankly, the computer guys who chose KB = 1024 B hijacked SI units and broke them. This was the real root of the problem. Hard drive guys are doing it the right way as far as I am concerned. I just wish the software guys would follow suit.

#25.2 nhut on 19 Sep 2003 - 11:03

I somehow think there was more to it than "Let's randomly choose 1024".

Hmm... 1024 x 64 = 65536, the maximum records in an Excel spreadsheet. Coincidence? I think not....

#25.3 kingius on 19 Sep 2003 - 11:23

Exactly. Computer work using base 2 because they only really understand binary - on or off. In base 2, everything is a power of 2 the further down the numbers you go. E.g.

1/2/4/8/16/32/64/128/256/512/1024

Do these numbers look familiar to anyone here?

#26 Kashida on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:53

i was kinda disgruntled when I purchased a 200gb hdd and after format it was 189...losing 11gb and $220 for the drive is crap.

#27 WishX on 19 Sep 2003 - 05:32

Don't forget, this is why monitors are sold by marketing the VIEWABLE space, not the monitor dimensions. Like 17" Monitor (16.8" viewable)... that all happened because of a lawsuit much like this one, only different. It still came down to measurements and math, but now its just the accepted norm. Personally, I'm happy I now know how much viewable space I get in a monitor, so that lawsuit worked out for the better.

As long as these chumps aren't going for "punitive damages" or some other kind of money and just want HD makers (or resellers) to state how much you REALLY get (like with monitors) then I'm all for it.

#28 Milka on 19 Sep 2003 - 05:42

LOL, someone should start suing people for being too dumb, ****ing mad to take up courts time for this while rapist/murders and worse are on the loose, everyone with just a little bit of IQ knows about the 1024 vs 1000 bytes and it depends on the file system.

It's the same as people suing McDonald for making them too fat... those people should be sued for being god too damn dumb to live in this world.

(1 reply) #29 mikeh420 on 19 Sep 2003 - 05:44

Whining about a supposed 7% loss! Typical lawyers!

#29.1 Mashiki on 19 Sep 2003 - 09:48

Supposed 7% loss? These two drives drives are Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 w/8meg buffers. As you can see each drive reports a different size even tho the manufacture date for them is only 6mo apart. Now that could be due to platter density increases, which I don't mind too much. It should also be noted that the primary drive of mine crapped out I just had it replaced with the same model on advance RMA. Now I understand the difference between a "logical" megabyte and a "marketing" megabyte; but it's deceptive advertising nothing more...nothing less.

I hope my rogers webspace doesn't crap out...it's only got 300mb of bandwidth. lol

(1 reply) #30 slapnuts_ox on 19 Sep 2003 - 06:14

what i find as funny is how people are saying oh i lost 12GB when I formatted or some other number....the thing is that you never had that space to begin with. Thats just todays standard.....people need to grow up and stop sueing everyone for every little thing.

#30.1 mr_da3m0n on 19 Sep 2003 - 17:24

12gb?!

uh... yeah, okay o.o

the thing is that you never had that space to begin with.

Uhm... yeah but they don't know about it. It's like the ghz myth. Let's sue intel because their CPUs are slower than AMDs of the same or lower speed....

I admit it's ridiculous to sue over this, but no need to be so anal about it...

#31 kaffra on 19 Sep 2003 - 06:37

A group of computer owners has filed a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest makers of personal computers, claiming that their advertising deceptively overstates the true capacity of their hard drives

I think its good they brought it up, it is deceptive, not everyone is technical savy and understands the diffrence. If this makes the manufactures show the actual size you get to use, i think its a good development.

#32 neocookie on 19 Sep 2003 - 07:14

I thought this was just a file-system problem. I've heard that ReiserFS, EXT3, and other "Journaled" file-systems use the space better than the usual file-systems.

Another feature of Reiserfs is that the balanced tree stores not just metadata, but also the file data itself. In a traditional filesystem such as ext2, space on the disk is allocated in blocks ranging in size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes, or even larger. If a file's size happens to be anything other than an exact multiple of the block size, space will be wasted. For example, suppose the block size is 1024 bytes but you need to store a file that is 8195 bytes long. Eight blocks is 8192, so almost all of the file will fit into eight blocks. The remaining three bytes have their own block, which is mostly empty! The wasted space is almost one whole block out of nine, or about 11 percent. Now imagine a file 1025 bytes long. It almost, but not quite, fits into one block, but requires two. The wasted space is nearly 50 percent. The worst case is a very tiny file, such as a trivial (but useful) one-line shell script. Such a file may be only 50 bytes or so (for example) and would fit into just one block. But if the block is 1024 bytes, then the file has wasted about 95 percent of its allocated space. As you can see, the wasted space (as a percentage) is smaller if the files are larger.

--Taken from
"An In-Depth Look at Reiserfs" @ http://www.linuxplanet.com/
Direct Link: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/2926/1/

(2 replies) #33 CubanPete on 19 Sep 2003 - 07:45

This is shocking, it sounds like aload of people who can only be described as Technical Deserts. Ive been using a pc for 14 years and when i buy a hard drive i know if it says 20gb that i will get around 18 due to the 1024bytes in 1kb and depending on the file system i use determins how much space is taken up by the file allocation table. Next will be food manufactures because of crumbs etc people dont get the whole 500g of bread in a bag or something because of crumbs falling off on the floor.

#33.1 chris_kabuki on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:01

What about when you are buying Flash Cards, or CD's, or DVD's, or RAM?
I would hope that if you've been using computers for 14years then you would know that measurements are either based on binary or decimal depending on what you are buying.... but what about for Joe Blog who goes in a buys a Dell computer? Do they realise that each of the sizes has been calculated in a different manner?

THAT is why this lawsuit is against Dell, Gateway etc and not against Western Digital and Seagate! WD HDD are all in decimal and they state so but do Dell explain that the HDD size is actually a lot bigger than what they will actually have... but that the RAM is the exact amount they will have?

#33.2 briangw on 19 Sep 2003 - 12:09

but do Dell explain that the HDD size is actually a lot bigger than what they will actually have... but that the RAM is the exact amount they will have?

Yes, I've seen Dell boxes/manuals that have asteriks next to the HDD size, explaining that the size is based on a formula. This lawsuit is so incredibly f'in stupid and a waste of taxpayer's monies.

(1 reply) #34 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 07:54

2^30 bytes is 1 GB
10^9 bytes is not 1 GB

That is not actually true.

This quote from www.dpreview.com:

The misleading MB
There has been a lot of talk recently about misleading marketing in the flash media storage market. The truth of the matter is that hard disk manufacturers have been using this system of units now for many years. Indeed 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes (as defined in SI standards), but after we've formatted our cards and look at them in Windows (which defines a MB in the memory sense as 1,048,576 bytes) we see a smaller number than is printed on the label. A MB in this sense should actually be called a mebibyte. This confusion should be addressed more clearly by the manufacturers.

For more info, go look at SI Units at NIST

#34.1 SanGreal on 19 Sep 2003 - 12:34

Windows is correct (as is any other operating system, which will result in the same space). The terms kilo, mega, giga, etc when referring to computers aren't based on the SI system, as its base 2 not base 10. Should they have used the SI terms? No, but that doesn't change the facts. HDD use the SI standard because they know it makes it look like there is more space, and it comes out to a nice round number.

(2 replies) #35 Saadu on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:08

OMG

I just ordered a 180Gb... does that mean im not getting 180

Shoulda thought about it before

Point taken that its because of the conversion. But DO FOOKIN mention the fact that its NOT 20Gb but 18 when u use it Gaaaddammit! Thats false advertising.

#35.1 briangw on 19 Sep 2003 - 12:10

OMG I just ordered a 180Gb... does that mean im not getting 180
Shoulda thought about it before
Point taken that its because of the conversion. But DO FOOKIN mention the fact that its NOT 20Gb but 18 when u use it Gaaaddammit! Thats false advertising.

Read the fine print. It's in there.

#35.2 Saadu on 20 Sep 2003 - 13:17

Actually, now that it has arrived, it says 185.2 GB on it. Mfg sept 2003

So i hope when i format it into NTFS, it stays around 180 and doesnt drop too low.

(2 replies) #36 hassverbrecher on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:49

I learned in Computer Science, that kB is Kilobyte = 1000 Byte (as everything starting with kilo is 10^3 according to SI). And then there is KByte (pronounced Kay-Byte) = 1024 Byte. I know that almost nobody uses it strictly this way but the point is, technically 1 GB = 10^9 Bytes and 1 GByte = 2^30 Byte.

#36.1 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 09:41

This is exactly correct!!!

Unfortunately k / K is only a slight differentiation and is not feasible with M and G (cos the SI is not m or g, as these are already used for milli- and gram respectively).

And nobody makes hardrive in Kbytes

only Gbytes.

#36.2 mrbester on 19 Sep 2003 - 11:19

They used to, and that's where the rot started. Some marketing drone sussed that doing a base 10 division resulted in a larger number than a base 2 division, which made it appear bigger and therefore better than the competitors.

(1 reply) #37 ShiZZa on 19 Sep 2003 - 08:54

the drive is the size it says and you FAT table witch also comes with a copy takes up the other chuck so a 20 HD formats to 18ish because it has 2 1gig ish fat tables.

Also depending on what partion type you use it would be diffrent anyways... lots of factors. cluster size and everything.

#37.1 SanGreal on 19 Sep 2003 - 12:37

This is incorrect. While formatting does cause you to lose a small amount of space, the larger culprit is from the base 10 SI gigabyte (120,000,000,000) to the base 2 computer gigabyte ( 114,440,917,968 )

(2 replies) #38 PhilUK on 19 Sep 2003 - 09:06

"There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't."

#38.1 Wrath Delivery on 19 Sep 2003 - 09:42

So am I type 0 or 1? Or is it 1 or 10?

hehe

#38.2 Tikimotel on 19 Sep 2003 - 18:51

I own a digital TV, "1 on" and "0 off".

Neowin.net