Re: hard disks more than 8gb
> Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 20:29:22 -0500 (CDT)
> CC: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> From: Dave Sherohman <esper@usinternet.com>
>
> Daniel Barclay said:
> > > From: Kenneth Scharf <scharkalvin@yahoo.com>
> > > .... Fdisk reported my 17.2 maxtor (which the bios
> > > sizes as about 16.8gb, so maxtor lies a little).
> >
> > Why are so many computer users so ignorant of international
> > standards?
>
> What do international standards have to do with it?
That's where the definition that the giga- and G prefixes mean
10^9 comes from.
> I doubt that this is
> due to one source using G = 10^9 and the other using G = 2^30;
But it is. Haven't you heard the every-so-often arguments about this
(that drive manufacturers "lie" by people who forget that computer
users are approximating when we use G to mean 2^30 instead of 10^9)?
> any disk
> loses some of its (theoretical) capacity when formatted because the
> format itself is data and uses some of that capacity. 'Losing' 0.4G out
> of a 17G drive sounds about right.
The difference is not that. (The drive manufacturers aren't stating
an unformatted capacity (as diskettes sometimes still mention); they're
telling you how much capacity there is for you to use.)
Daniel
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