Hi all.
:)

This is not a question about a hard-drive problem, so I have posted it here.
Hope this is the right forum - mods will move if I am deluding myself!!!
:D

With the recent Seagate lawsuit over formatted-vs-unformatted capacity of their drives, and what with ALL drives from just about any of the brand-name manufactures including Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, Toshiba etc soaring to gigantic storage capacities these days, does anyone think that the way in which drives are labeled(1,000 bytes vs 1,024 bytes = a "Kilobyte") is to change anytime soon?

I refer you to this (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=60345) thread from a user having the 36GB problem on a 500GB drive.

I have just bought 4x 500GB Seagates(i'm building a 2TB server) and am having the exact same 36GB "Problem", although, I know all about this, so was not expecting to see 500GB on my 500GB drives.
:p

As I commented on the other thread, it has never really been much of a problem on smaller capacity drives - anything up to about 40GB drives, the difference is almost negligible, but now, with 500GB, 750GB and 1TB drives commonly available, the difference is pretty scary. There is a somewhat staggering 72GB difference between a formatted and unformatted 1TB drive - this is A LOT!.

Does anyone here think that drive manufactures will start labeling the new generation of high-capacity drives using the more correct 1,024 bytes-per kilobyte figure, for ACCURATE capacity labeling, or do you guys think that they will continue to use the (incorrect, IMHO) 1,000 bytes per kilobyte system?

The former would result in a lower capacity label on the drive(which the drive manufacturers would not be keen on), whereas the latter would result in a correct and accurate storage capacity on the label.(which the buyer would be keen on)

...perhaps they already have started to label based on 1,024 bytes?

Opinions?
Thoughts?

There is a somewhat staggering 72GB difference between a formatted and unformatted 1TB drive - this is A LOT!.You can go round and round the houses as to whether GB or GiB is the more correct. The simple answer if for both values to be printed or leave out any prefixes and print 1,000,000,000,000 bytes instead of using terabyte or TB at all. The G or T are both SI units so it is hard to be that critical of their use. Unfortunately Gibi, as opposed to Giga, has little meaning to non-Geeks.