[twrbarnes]

In response to this though late, I just bought a 160 gig Seagate drive that is in fact 148 gig. In plain english, this tatic of decimal versus binary amounts to nothing more than advertising fraud on the part of the companies that make these products. and the funny thing is that it's perfectly legal.
Over the years I've purchased many hard drives; this practice began primarly with the introduction of windows based systems. I currently have 2 Seagate drives; the 160 & a 80 gig both which show 148.4 and 74.2 gigs of space. After a long discussion with Seagate and all the techno-babble, plain math says I was ripped off of about 18.4 gigs of hard drive capacity.
Whether you like it or not, these companies will continue this practice unless enough people complain to the Better Business Bureau and the companies themselves.
For those who have older systems and are having trouble getting them to regonize these newer large capacity drives there is very few choices out there to gain the full use of the less than advertised capacity of the drive. Here is a few of them rank by the best choices first:
1. Get a new computer with the latest operating system. We all know that even if than old 800 pentium system works just fine, its out of date, especially after you add all those new cards and large drives. Even if your running Windows XP all you'll get for your trouble is a system that's impossibly slow & plagued with constant freze ups. This is because the slower processors will acuallly cause a "Bottleneck" effect due to the overwhelming data that's being run through it, esspecially with the newer operating systems which have a ton of background services running. Just look at the processes under your task manager to see them. Most are redundant and usless but, if you try closing most of them out be prepared for your system to shut down.

2. Like the first choice; get a new operating system. I have a friend who refuses to upgrade from Win98 to XP simply because he, like his computer is still stuck in the Twilight Zone. Whether you run a Windows based pc or a Mac, you need to upgrade and update. Windows is quickly phasing out support for even their newer versions of operating software thats pre- XP. Currently for Windows users; XP only with the SP2 update will recognize your new drive larger than a 137 gigs, without the manufacture's installation software (which is useful, since most require you to preload the software or run it at start up from a CD rom drive & there are still many out there who are using older computers whose CMOS Bios chips won't regonize a CD Drive. If you are using the new drive as a "primary or master" hard drive, rather than storage, this will really suck, as the Bios itself will only give you access to about 32 - 137 gigs of the total space depending on the age of the chip. Like the first choice; if you use older equipment as the base of your system, your going to have fits trying to get newer hardware or software to work properly.

3. Ok, so your computer is just a couple of years old, in great shape, but you already have two drives and both are filled to capacity with music, videos, or whatever. Simple, Most computers since around 2000 have at least two USB ports; buy a external drive. I say this for several reasons; its cheaper than buying a internal drive + a PCI controller card and once its set up, all you have to really do is plug it into the computer's USB port, Its portable, allowing you to use your stored files on other computers, and finally, It's nothing more than an internal hard drive in a self-contained case. Their is no difference other than price, which is not much more than a regular internal drive (shop around) and it is in its own case. It is more rugged, able resisting shock better and it very easy to remove and use as a internal drive if you so desire (though why anyone would want to do this is beyond me, you void your warranty). But, as I have come to learn, unless you buy a complete system from a good company, most computer hardware accesories manufactures will not honor them anyway and they have a myriad of excuses to give as to not to. I once bought a soundcard with the plug in amplifier chip missing and all the company would say is that I had removed it. Upon then returning it to the place of purchase, and getting no results, I then brought another of the exact same thing and had the store to install it in front of me. As soon as the tech opened it, guess what the same chip was also missing from this card as well. The only thing that saved me from losing money twice was I made the purchase at a in store site and they were a reputable company. Though, I do make some purchases on line, I research deeply any company I might consider ordering from this way.

These are just a few suggestions but, about their about the only ways to avail yourself of the full use of your new large capacity hard drive. As for the down right deceit on the part of hard drive manufactures, they should be required in plain bold english to explain on the box the actual capacity of the hard drive, or use the binary system of reporting the hard drive capacity to begin with. Yet if you look at all the other hardware that contains memory or processing chips they do exactly the same thing. A 800MHz pentium will actually only be about 797 Mhz.