Hard Drive Capacity Confusion, Lucidly Explained

mrklin writes "James Wiebe of wiebetech.com has written a clear example of how hard drive capacity is calculated (PDF file) by hard drive manufacturers (base 10) and OS (base 2). He failed to name how the capacity should be described, though."

Comments

Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[l810c]

How much Porn will it hold?

This one will hold 30 days of Porn

Now, this one here will hold 45 days of Porn

Break it down to something Everyone understands

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[orthogonal]

How much Porn will it hold?

This one will hold 30 days of Porn

Now, now, now, this is just wrong!

Everybody knows you don't measure porn in days.

True porn afficianados know that you measure porn in terms of the amount of keyboard cleaning required.

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[Trogre]

True porn afficianados know that you measure porn in terms of the amount of keyboard cleaning required.

Hmmmm

Help me live longer! ...

No.... I don't think I'll be doing that.

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[darkov]

Your idea is good, but it needs a unit since "days of porn" clumsy. I propose the "ejac" which is one days worth of porn. Larger units are derived using the usual base 10 system:

decaejac
kiloejac
megaejac
gigaejac ... and so on

This is a handy unit since it can be converted into time (1 ejac = 20 minutes), liquid volume (1 ejac = 10cc), sound volume (1 ejac = 90dB) and distance (1 ejac = 75cm).

If we all pull together, with this as our common goal, we can make the ejac a truly universal unit.

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[darkov]

Hmmm. We could use a neutral term like "wanker" in this case.

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[Johnso]

This is a handy unit...

Literally.

If we all pull together...

Then we'd just have a mess on our hands... and keyboards...

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[LadyLucky]

I'm somewhat disturbed that you've taken the time to measure these attributes of your performance.

Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah

[Monkelectric]

I swear to god I actually did this--

I was in Fry's computer store one day with a few friends when saw a guy holding *two* 120GB drives (about the largest drives there were at the time and very expensive). I walked up to him and said in my best strong bad impression, "Ouhhhgghh I bet those would hold ALOT of porn!"

The guy turned bright red and didn't say a word :) But he knew :)

But seriously

[nefele]

The real units joke is starting to get old...

What's next?

[blake8087]

Monitor sizes? I love my 19" (18" viewable) monitor!

Re:So how do you say it?

[dtfinch]

It depends on how many times you've watched "Back to the Future."

Old chips, new drives

[Flakeloaf]

I don't know what he's talking about; my Pentium 66 insists that 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,000,000 exactly.

Mebi!?! Gebi!?!

[clambake]

How many Libraries of Congress does this translate to? Come on people, use standard units!

Is that you Le Chuck'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Treasure! ... Aarrg.

Yours truly,

Guybrush Threepwood

PS I thought the last few Starwars movies sucked!

Re:What's the deal today?

[gid13]

Realized... The word is realized...

Re:Does it matter anymore?

[Basehart]

My 5GB iPod actually has around 4.7GB of storage space. That's a couple of albums short of 5GB. So the way I see it you're implying that Tales From Topographic Oceans doesn't mean anything!

Re:Damnit - It happened to me today!

[shadowcabbit]

Even better-- pay in Canadian currency. That way it really is smaller. "I paid you 299 dollars and ninety-nine cents, just like we agreed upon. The fact is, you never specified the American dollar or the Canadian dollar, so I just used the unit more convenient for me."

Re:I've said this before

[Feztaa]

Yes, that is a great idea!

Except, instead of calling it a "short kilobyte", we could just call it a "kilobyte", and instead of calling it a "long kilobyte", we could just call it a "kibibyte". Oh, wait...

Re:Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I've also heard that for some drive makers "gigabyte" means 1^20*10^3

Man, someone sure is getting ripped off...

Re:Base 2

[Black Parrot]

> Our computers are binary, so the hard drives that we put in them should be measured using the binary (Base-2) representation.

Yes, please give us the case dimensions, power consumption, number of USB ports, and number of keys on the mouse in base 2 as well!

Re: just do it like apple

[Black Parrot]

> describe the size in terms of number of songs. (of course, /. regulars will describe in terms of how much porn)

I forget... is it 1.7 threesomes per song, or is it the other way around?

Re:Does it matter anymore?

[bait4719]

OMG! Size DOES matter. Now to recover all that deleted email.

Re:So how do you say it?

[Walterk]

• I need to clear the one-oh-oneth bit of that byte
• one four em el thirty three tee. one four em dee four bee zero em be. one haxzeroed da eff fourtynine be five ceeth byte zero of dat file
• octal one thousand two hundred thrirty two, the number of the breast
• bad morning, critter, open your history books in the four hundred thirty seventh (Cee Dee Triple Ex Vee Double I for the useless among you kids who don't know roman numerals) page. Today we are going to read how kids like you were dispised, tortured back in the good ol' day. [mumble]useless child protection laws[/mumble]

In the pocket of the HDD manufacturers

[Zog The Undeniable]

Well, the article doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already. The only critical point is that 1GB in marketing-speak != 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes, and that is still outrageous after all these years. "Easy to understand"...I don't think so.

Now if the drive manufacturers really wanted to go decimal, they'd use a 10 bit byte...but that would mean they had to give you a bigger drive for your money!

Oh yeah, and did anyone else laugh like a drain when the author used "IBM", "hard drive" and "reliable" in the same paragraph? ;-)

Re:Does it matter anymore?

[dotgain]

Ah, the 32 gig limit. But that's the 32 x 2^30 B and not 30 x 10^6, so you could comfortably fit, oh, say /afiftygigdrive/ in it no worries.

Re:Does it matter anymore?

[Greedo]

Example,
Giga is supposed to be pronounced with a J.


Finally! Now I know how to pronounce that stupid Ben Afflick movie title.