What's the TRUE capacity?

Question

Contemplating going to the Applestore this morning to buy an iPod classic. The decision on size rests largely on the TRUE capacity. I am replacing my 60Gb 5G which my music collection has outgrown. The TRUE capacity of this was 55.7Gb. I now have 76Gb of music, photos and videos - will this fit on an 80Gb?
I know that this is an old trick of the HD manufacturer but in my opinion 80Gb should have a capacity of 80Gb and the 160Gb should hold 160Gb. If I bought a petrol can that claims to hold 5 Gallons and took it to the filling station only to end up with petrol all over my leg because the TRUE capacity was 4.6 Gallons I would be severely annoyed.

Answer 1

My point though is why not used the same system to measure the drive as one uses to measure the data to fit on it? I know there's small print but surely it would be better to be honest?
Back in the 1970's and early 1980's, some computer companies would use the "honest" number when advertising the amount of memory in their computers. But other computer companies would use the "less honest" number. Computer buyers would see two computers for sale at the same price but one of them would list a higher amount of memory. So, of course, the computers from the less honest companies would sell better even though the actual amount of memory was the same. This left the honest companies little choice but to adopt the less honest numbers.
Once hard drives started to appear, the practice was extended to them. People did not notice this at first because the difference between the honest and less honest numbers was not large. But as hard drive sizes increased, the difference became greater.