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Hard Drive Capacity Confusion, Lucidly Explained

Posted by timothy on from the fudging-the-numbers dept.

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."

8 of 482 comments (clear)

  1. Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah by l810c · · Score: 5, Funny
    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

    1. Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah by orthogonal · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    2. Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah by Trogre · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    3. Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah by darkov · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
    4. Re:Gigi? Nah Gibi? Nah by Johnso · · Score: 3, Funny
      This is a handy unit...

      Literally.

      If we all pull together...

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

      --
      I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
  2. Old chips, new drives by Flakeloaf · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    --

    Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?

  3. Re:Damnit - It happened to me today! by shadowcabbit · · Score: 3, Funny

    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."

    --
    "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
  4. Re:Does it matter anymore? by dotgain · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.