Portable Ext HDD Recommendation

Hi I need an external HDD asap and I'm down to deciding between these 2

1) Western Digital 1TB

Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive WDBACX0010BBK-NESN (Midnight Black): Electronics

2) iOmega 1 TB

Amazon.com: Iomega 1TB eGo BlackBelt Portable Hard Drive, SuperSpeed USB 3.0/USB 2.0 - 35327: Electronics

The problem is that according to reviews both of these drives have "virtual drive" software which is apparently a nuisance and is either really hard or impossible to completely remove.

So I was wondering if anyone on this site had either of these drives and knew of way to remove this crap. I just want simple storage solution that gives me exactly 1 TB. I don't need any of that security crap or extra software.

For example the WD is advertised as 1 TB but it shows up as only 931 GB...which is sorta ridiculous given how much you paid for it.

So does anyone have recommendations or solutions on which I should buy?

 

Anyone have any opinion?

 

All hard drives are like that plus any of that crapware installed on it.

1TB = 1,000,000,000,000B

931.32*1024*1024*1024 = 1,000,000,000,000B

HDD makers measure storage in decimal, Windows does it in binary.

Be wary of some of the 2.5" portable drives, they have a proprietary USB connector soldered onto it sometimes.

 

So you're saying that I am actually getting 1 TB with the WD drive then? And I shouldn't be worried about paying for space that I'm not going to be able to utilize?

 

This has always bugged me...i hate how HDD makers don't use binary. It is really stupid.

 

No you're always going to get less than the advetised capacity based on the math Tsunade posted regardless of drive.

 

I'm sorry but that makes ZERO sense...why did he do that calculation then? What's his point? I want 1 TB of storage and he showed that 931 times all that stuff equals 1 with all those 0s. So am I going to be able to use the entire 1TB or what?

 

Dude did you even read my post? Hard drive manufacturers measure drive capacity in decimal, Windows however uses binary. There's a rift in how manufacturers calculate hard drive capacity and how Windows does. You ALWAYS get less advertised space. There's also the issue of formatting, and also that useless backup software.

Newegg.com - Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB USB 2.0 Silver Portable External Hard Drive WDBABM0010BSL-NESN

Silver version of the drive, 95 after EMCKJKF44 promo code free shipping.

 

The whole point is that it's 2 different ways of measuring things. The decimal way, which is the way that advertisers like to measure it because it gives you bigger numbers with less is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. That's what they call a Terabyte, and technically, it's true, because it is a Tera-worth of bytes.

However, because computers don't actually work in decimal, but in binary, they don't work in powers of 1000 when you go from kilo to mega to giga to tera, but in multiples of 1024 (2^10 power). In other words, a kilobyte isn't the 1000 bytes that people assume, but 1024 bytes. A megabyte isn't 1000 kilobytes, but 1024 kilobytes, and so forth. This means that the advertised 1,000,000,000,000 bytes in terms of the Gigabytes that computers think in (the 1024[kilobyte conversion] * 1024[megabyte conversion] * 1024[gigabyte conversion]) comes out to the 931.32 GB. For a full Terabyte in the way computers think, it would be 1024*1024*1024*1024 or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.

This of course, is just on the byte level, and ignores any losses from installed software, formatting/MFT, and other necessary losses.