[SOLVED] 960 GB vs 1 TB

[MdAyq0l]

Some manufacturers produce 960 GB SSD SATA III 2.5 inch drives (but not 1 TB drives). Example: Intel® D3-S4510.
Others produce 1 TB SSD SATA III 2.5 inch drives (but not 960 GB drives). Example: Samsung 860 EVO.
Sometimes I see also 1000 GB in a drive description, but I can't find any such drive at this moment.

The actual capacities of these drives are probably very close (960 = 1000 − 4 % if we omit the units of measurement).
Is there a real difference, measured in bytes? Or do these drives have the same capacity in bytes, but the manufacturers count differently and employ different conventions on what a terabyte and a gigabyte are exactly? Or is there a well-known compatibility requirement that 960 GB drives satisfy but 1 TB (and, perhaps, 1000 GB) drives don't satisfy (and that's why it makes sense to sell drives of capacity slightly less than 1 TB)?

 

[USAFRet]

Just the way the chips are laid out.
I have one drive that is listed at 1.02TB. Others at 1TB, and 960GB.

 

[MdAyq0l]

Just the way the chips are laid out.
I have one drive that is listed at 1.02TB. Others at 1TB, and 960GB.

So, what does it mean concerning the actual capacity, measured in bytes?

 

[USAFRet]

So, what does it mean concerning the actual capacity, measured in bytes?

Not a whole lot.
The one on the left is "1.02TB", on the right "1TB".

Also note the 953 and 931GB. That is the true size of the data space.
Box says 1TB, drive is read as 931GB. This is normal and to be expected. There is no missing space.
Simply different reporting units.
Human vs computer
Base 10 vs Base 2.

Which is faster, 160kph or 100mph?
Same speeding ticket, just different units.

 

[MdAyq0l]

I see. Well,

the true size of the data space

is better measured in something else, such as bytes or bits, since the term "GB" also has at least two meanings.

There is no missing space.

Aha. I have not paid attention to this when asking the question.
However, sure, when you think about it, there is a convention of putting a space between a number and a unit of measurement. If you write “1TB” and “931GB“, you write some identifier, not a number with a unit of measurement. Having an identifier “1TB” is of course possible and is probably a good marketing gag for the manufacturers and a headache for the consumers: the manufacturer better tell us consumers the capacity (in bytes) elsewhere.

Anyway, if anyone has comparisons of

• a “960GB” drive with a “1TB” drive,
• a “1000GB” drive with a “1TB” drive,
• a “960 GB” drive with a “1 TB” drive, or
• a “1000 GB” drive with a “1 TB” drive,

I'd be happy to see them.

 

[USAFRet]

They do tell you. There was even a lawsuit about that supposed disparity, over a decade ago. Hence, the tiny print on the box the drive comes in.

Gigabytes vs gibibytes.
1000 vs 931
Base 10 vs Base 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

GiB to GB Conversion Gibibyte to Gigabyte Calculator

GiB to GB conversion is a tool to calculate data storage capacity of digital information, learn how many gigabytes in a gibibyte, convert gibibytes to gigabytes.

www.gbmb.org

https://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html

Gigabytes vs. gibibytes class action suit nears end

Suit alleges companies misrepresent capacity of flash memory devices by using decimal definitions, thus overstating memory card sizes by 4 percent to 5 percent.

www.cnet.com

 

[geofelt]

In some cases it is the difference between 1000 and 1K= 1024
Vendors will differ in how much space reserved for spares and performance

All in all, it is a distinction without a difference.

 

[Maxxify]

Over-provisioning

 

[MdAyq0l]

the right "1TB".

Your image is interesting. In fact, a message in print on a Samsung 860 EVO , namely,
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/8107+oAFSmL._AC_SL1500_.jpg
says that 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes. But, your 1TB drive has 1,000,067,821,568 bytes, so, logically, Samsung's “1TB” is NOT 1000 GB, but 1,000.067821568 GB. Isn't this crazy?

 

[USAFRet]

“1TB”
"1,000.067821568 GB. "


Which one do you print on the side of the box, or in the Amazon listing?

 

[MdAyq0l]

“1TB”
"1,000.067821568 GB. "


Which one do you print on the side of the box, or in the Amazon listing?

Marketing is a different story. However, some old laptops cannot deal with more than "1 TB" in the sense of 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. For such cases, knowing the exact capacity makes a lot of sense. (Don't ask me how overprovisioning is counted for such limits; I don't know.)

 

[USAFRet]

Marketing is a different story. However, some old laptops cannot deal with more than "1 TB" in the sense of 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. For such cases, knowing the exact capacity makes a lot of sense. (Don't ask me how overprovisioning is counted for such limits; I don't know.)

If a laptop is old enough to have a "1 TB" drive be an issue, then it and its OS is old enough for a 500 GB drive to be plenty of space.

 

[MdAyq0l]

OS is old enough for a 500 GB drive to be plenty of space.

Not if several folks use a laptop, and all love to store movies and music they like.

 

[USAFRet]

Not if several folks use a laptop, and all love to store movies and music they like.

And what specific laptops are we talking about, that are actually limited to exactly 1,000 GB and not a single byte more?

Alternately, there are other means of data storage. I'm pretty sure that when my cheesy Toshiba laptop was built in 2009, with its 160 GB drive, that accessing 50 TB of physical drive space was not to be done.
However, that is exactly what it can do when it talks to my NAS box over on the other side of the room.

 

[MdAyq0l]

specific laptops are we talking about, that are actually limited to exactly 1,000 GB

Dell Precision M6700, according to Dell. It is unknown whether the laptop can access more. However, the moment you try it out, you will have unboxed the drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Dell Precision M6700, according to Dell. It is unknown whether the laptop can access more. However, the moment you try it out, you will have unboxed the drive.

THIS?

https://www.dell.com/ba/business/p/precision-m6700/pd

https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/en/us/Dell-Precision-M6700-Spec-Sheet-tab.pdf

A 3rd Gen i5 or i7 system, with Win 7 or 8, can certainly utilize a drive far larger than 1TB.
And that is not I would consider "old" in terms of max drive size.

The drives and sizes listed in the spec sheet are just what it is sold with.


And as far as unboxing the drive....Amazon will take it back in the first 30 days, no questions asked.
For any reason, or no reason at all.
"It didn't work with my system"

 

[MdAyq0l]

A 3rd Gen i5 or i7 system, with Win 7 or 8, can certainly utilize a drive far larger than 1TB.

Intel Core i7-3720QM with Windows 10 and Debian, to be precise. Dell said drives with more than 1 TB won't work with it. However, their information need not be very reliable: each time your get someone on the chat, you get slightly different information.

 

[USAFRet]

Don't know what to say, man.
A 1 TB limitation on that is ludicrous and wrong.
And even if it were, 0.067821568 GB 'over' that is not a factor.

Now....if wee were talking about a 1997 Latitude with a Pentium 233 processor (i have one in the garage on the shelf)...then "1 TB" might be too much.

 

[USAFRet]

Now...if the drive is formatted MBR, as was usual for WIn 7 era, then there is a 2.2TB limit for the boot drive partition. Anything beyond that cannot be used.

But not 1TB.

 

[MdAyq0l]

But not 1TB.

Sorry, I don't have more information about "why". They might have read the manual, which says "1 TB 5400 rpm", derived the maximum size of the SSD drive from there, and then tested it with 1 TB. I don't really know but I wouldn't be surprised.

After all, you need some bitwidth for sector numbers, and the bitwidth is likely to be fixed to maximize the speed, reduce the number of gates to lower the cost of mass production of hardware, and simplify programming.

(I would be speculating, but this could be a BIOS restriction. When I recall what happened ten-twenty years ago, there were restrictions on the ATA interface: some drives capacities needed LBA, and some old-computers' BIOSes couldn't deal with it, which meant that if an operating-system update wrote its boot code somewhere where BIOS could not access it, the computer boot failed.)

Anyway, I'm not going to be the first one to try out >1TB.

 

[USAFRet]

It said 1TB in the spec sheet, because that what was available, and a configuration it came with.

20 year old configs and policies are...20 years old.
Things have changed.

 

[MdAyq0l]

Things have changed.

Right. In the parts that are not regulated by the law and do emerge due to market pressure, I expect “changed” to mean “worsened”.

 

[USAFRet]

Right. In the parts that are not regulated by the law and do emerge due to market pressure, I expect “changed” to mean “worsened”.

'worsened' ?
hmmm.....

First laptop I bought with my own money:
1995 Fujitsu Lifebook 765Dx
166MHz Pentium
Win95
16MB RAM (expandable to 80MB)
1.34 GB HDD
7.6lbs
$1500

Contrast that with a Lenovo 300e I bought last summer:
2.2GHz Quadcore N3450
4 GB RAM
64 GB eMMC drive
Win 10
Touchscreen (flip into tablet mode)
3lbs
$250

 

[MdAyq0l]

Sure. The specs you gave are all subject to market pressure. What did get worse but you have not mentioned is, e.g., the amount of stuff you can plug into it. Old but intact printers won't work with your new laptop because an LPT DB25 port is missing. Neither would old RS232C-mice, old RS232C-auto-answering machines or PS/2-connectable keyboards and mice work with your Lenovo. I've just taken a look on

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHb0Jiqx2aA
, and I got amazed. Yes, your $1500 were well invested at the time.

Now, saving one bit of width for the sector number (“what if we never plug in anything beyond ___ GB (or ___TB)”) is not subject to a market pressure. Saving a bit here or a bit there is something I actually expect that the manufacturers do all the time. If you go even deeper to the CPU, controller, or die level, then everything is a tradeoff. The situation should not be that different from what you said earlier about the warranty (“What if the lifetime of the device is 5 years at most”).
Anyway, I'd be utmost happy if someone says "Md, you're an extreme psychopath because I have been using a 2 TB SATA III 2.5 inch SSD with a Precision M6700 for a year already." or similar. Really.

 

[USAFRet]

And in a current laptop, you can plug in a dozen devices via USB.
Or even no plug, via WiFi.

Things change. Interfaces change.
Nostalgia for old stuff is fine, but don't look at them through rose colored glasses.

Warranty? I can count the number of devices I'd had fail during the warranty period on one hand, and have fingers left over.
1x HDD at 5 weeks, and 1x SSD at 33 days past the 3 year warranty.
Oh, and the original 160 GB HDD in my sons laptop, died at about 60 days. The (larger) replacement is still going strong 10 years later.

Of the 12 SSD's in current use in my house? The earlier mentioned SanDisk 960 GB is the only one that died.
All the others, some going back to 2012, are still going strong.