-----Message d'origine----- De : Jerome Lyles [mailto:susemail@hawaii.rr.com] Envoyé : mercredi 23 juin 2004 08:17 À : suse-linux-e@suse.com Objet : Re: [SLE] Hard drive size question

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 06:40 am, Catimimi wrote:

...

...

-----Message d'origine----- De : Thom Nuzum [mailto:linux@tendata.com] Envoyé : mardi 22 juin 2004 18:23 À : suse-linux-e@suse.com Objet : [SLE] Hard drive size question

My hard drive is a Seagate 160G. SUSE reads it (both 9 and 9.1) as 149GB plus 1 Gb for swap on partion stage of install. Kquick disk tells me its 145.2 GB. Just wondering why the difference and where is the 5-10G. Is this anything to worry about? Thanks

No don't worry, for some people 1ko = 1024 bits !! so 149 GB x1.024x1.024x1.024=160 GB

that's all

Michel.

Michel, Is 1ko a kilobit? Why do you multiply it three times? Curious, Jerome

1000 (1k) is equal to 10 to the power 3 1000000000 (1G) is equal to 10 to the power 9 so 1G=1k x 1k x 1k Michel

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

Alexandr Malusek wrote:

Steve Kratz writes:

...

The difference is due to the wonderful world of hard drive manufacturer's marketing departments.

Standards define SI (k,M,G,...) and binary (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) prefixes, see e.g. http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html. The problem is that (1) people are not aware of these standards, and (2) people ignore them. The situation will get better when binary prefixes are accepted by general public. Then everybody will understand that 160 GB = 149 GiB.

BTW, 100 mb stands for 100 millibits.

Are those bits or bytes ? Another cause of confusion. Or do you mean to say B=bytes, b=bits ? After more than 20 year in computers, I was not aware that there was a 'standard' :-(. I just looked into that link, and we will have to adapt our speach also : Q : How much memory does your PC have ? A : It has one gibibyte of RAM. -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong R&D Manager ACE electronics n.v.

Anders Johansson wrote:

On Wednesday 23 June 2004 10.12, Koenraad Lelong wrote:

If we're going to be technical, hard drive secondary memory is also random access, and so is most of the ROM you have on chips in your machine. The opposite of RAM isn't hard drives or ROM it's sequential memory (tapes, et al.). So right now I have about 300 gibigytes of RAM in my machine :)

A couple of years ago, I read a book, about IBM's early computers. It was amazing what was used for memory back in those days. On method, was to use drum storage. With drums, you had to consider where the next instruction or data was located, in order to optimize access times. Another system used CRTs, similar to those used in radar, with the phosphor persistence being used for storage. There was also another system, that used columns of mercury, for acoustic delay lines. In the mid '50s, IBM developed core memory, which was much cheaper at only $1 per byte!

On Wednesday 23 June 2004 08:45, Alexandr Malusek wrote: [...]

The NIST document uses B as the symbol for byte. I'm not aware of any standard recommending "b" as the symbol for bit but it's quite natural, at least to me :-), to interpret it like that.

...

I just looked into that link, and we will have to adapt our speach also : Q : How much memory does your PC have ? A : It has one gibibyte of RAM.

Actually, 1 GiB is approximately 1 GB, so you may still use the "oldspeak" if you know its limits.

Never mind that, how do you *say* it? I'd always heard Giga pronounced with two hard Gs, as in "go". Then some American moviemakers(*) popularized a leading soft G, as in Joe. So, Jiga. With a bad french accent, I can just see "Gigi" (zjhee-zjhee) working her way in there. My hard drive has 160 Gigibytes, et la plupart est tres sexy, non? Kevin (*) Those would be callous, know-nothing moviemakers who just happen to have far more money than I'll ever see in my life, but I'm not bitter.... oh no. ;->

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 15:38, Alexandr Malusek wrote: [...]

Standards define SI (k,M,G,...) and binary (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) prefixes, see e.g. http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html. The problem is that (1) people are not aware of these standards, and (2) people ignore them. The situation will get better when binary prefixes are accepted by general public. Then everybody will understand that 160 GB = 149 GiB.

BTW, 100 mb stands for 100 millibits.

Has anyone ever met a millibit? Information has "sub-atomic" particles? :-) Kewl! Er... that is... I mean........ partially kewl. Kevin

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 20:38, Alexandr Malusek wrote: <snip>

The situation will get better when binary prefixes are accepted by general public. Then everybody will understand that 160 GB = 149 GiB.

Don't hold your breath ... -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk

Örn Hansen wrote:

torsdag 24 juni 2004 14:46 skrev Fergus Wilde:

...

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 20:38, Alexandr Malusek wrote:

<snip>

...

The situation will get better when binary prefixes are accepted by general public. Then everybody will understand that 160 GB = 149 GiB.

Don't hold your breath ...

What I'm starting to read out of this thread is that the producers of hard drives have never really used GB in it's correct sence, but as base 10 number? So, My 80 GB hard drive, is really 80.000.000.000 bytes. Which, when divided by the binary base, would be 74 GB.

But, dear boy ... that's not really the public ignorance. That's actually borders on fraud on behalf of the producers. Since, by convention ... A KB always refers to 1024 Bytes, and a Mega Byte always refers to a 1024 * 1KB. The producers use of the notation, is used despite the convention ... no, don't even TRY to tell me that they're right, because every kid from here to timbuktu would have been flunked in answering a GB anything different than a 1024*1024*1024 Bytes, in any University. Unless you want to say all the professors were wrong, in which case I say good luck. The indicator G for Giga does not refer to any base at all. It is not "dependant" on the 10 base. It ONLY, and I mean ONLY refers to the power factor. And since Byte is a base 2 number, then a GB most certainly is too.

It's the way of the world, I hadn't visited MacDonalds for quite a while, I ordered a large milk shake, it looked like a medium so I queried it only to be told it was a large ........ Caveat Emptor ..... they're always inventing ways to screw you out of your cash and send you away thinking you just got a good bargain. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer ===== LINUX ONLY USED HERE =====

torsdag 24 juni 2004 16:49 skrev Sid Boyce:

It's the way of the world, I hadn't visited MacDonalds for quite a while, I ordered a large milk shake, it looked like a medium so I queried it only to be told it was a large ........ Caveat Emptor ..... they're always inventing ways to screw you out of your cash and send you away thinking you just got a good bargain.

Yes, if we turn that over to the Giga reference. Then Kilo as 1024 in hex, is just as wrong as 1000 is. Since a thousand, in hex would be 16 in the power of 3. Or, 1000(hex), which is 4096 in decimal. And a thousand in binary, would be 2 in the power of 3, which is 8 in decimal. Which is why I used the phrase "convention", since that's what 1024 really is ... a convention, not mathematically correct. Cheers.

Quoting Dylan :

On Tuesday 22 Jun 2004 17:23 pm, Thom Nuzum wrote:

...

My hard drive is a Seagate 160G. SUSE reads it (both 9 and 9.1) as 149GB plus 1 Gb for swap on partion stage of install.

As others have said - this is because HD manufacturers can't count in binary correctly. The bigger the drive the greater the discrepancy so more and more people are going to notice as drives grow...

I can sympathize with everyone and wish that when a disk manufacturer says a disk has a 160GB capacity, it really had 160 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes. However, for the record, they are right. The ISO defined Giga prefix corresponds to 1 * 10^9. Therefore, when one says a disk is 160GB, one is saying that it has 160 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 bytes and not what we would like it to have. It was the computer industry who decided to abuse the ISO kilo prefix and say it was 1024, instead of 1000. The computer "guys" and "gals" like to think in binary, but the ISO prefixes, as most of the world ;-), are based on decimal numbering.

...

Kquick disk tells me its 145.2 GB.

This difference is the overhead of actually writing a filesystem to the partition.

...

Just wondering why the difference and where is the 5-10G. Is this anything to worry about?

Nope, it's perfectly expected

HTH

Dylan

-- "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine" -Dark Helmet

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

------------------------------------------ Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto Network Manager and Systems Administrator Angra do Heroísmo Nursing School (ESEnfAH) ------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 09:33, Dylan wrote:

On Tuesday 22 Jun 2004 17:23 pm, Thom Nuzum wrote:

...

My hard drive is a Seagate 160G. SUSE reads it (both 9 and 9.1) as 149GB plus 1 Gb for swap on partion stage of install.

As others have said - this is because HD manufacturers can't count in binary correctly.

Well there are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen