Disk Space Math

I got a new 1.5 TB (Terabyte = 1,000 Gigabytes) external backup drive today...

300 Gigs of music, video and downloaded videogame content is just too much to backup via DVD ROM. (And that's not including the wife's PC or the multimedia machine.) The drive was on sale at my local Costco for $110. The cost was much better than New Egg & Amazon. Reviews are mixed, but I'm sure it'll do the job just fine.

Except, as all computer geeks know, it's not really 1.5 TB. The actual disk size is 1.36 TB. This is in keeping with accepted hard-drive space calculations. My head understands this. My heart, however, feels robbed out of 140 GB of space. That's a hard drive worth of space. It's one thing when my 16 GB iPod Touch is 14.5 GB. (Well, actually, I sometimes run out of room.) It's another mathematical beast when we start getting into Terabytes.

A few years ago, the EPA changed the fuel economy standards. Car nuts & fuel savers have known for a while that the sticker estimates were based on out-dated calculations. Guess what, the world continued to spin AND consumers were better protected. Why can't we have truth in advertising with disk space? As disks get getting bigger and bigger the "lie" is only becoming compounded.

I, for one, would welcome the change.

Anyway, full backup scheduled for tonight. This is all in prep to move us to Windows 7 sometime this winter. I need solid backups either way, but I really want them before upgrading. My plan is to get the family 3-pack license. Just trying to decide if I want to wait until after holiday expenses are dealt with.

Note: Have you noticed that car commercials now don't talk about the city/highway mpgs? They only talk about highway mileage. It sounds great when a car gets 30/mpg. Except that you've got to catch the fine print at the bottom of the commercial to see it's misleading.