Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 27 Dec 2001 12:34:08 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 27 Dec 2001 12:33:59 -0500 Received: from cs136068.pp.htv.fi ([213.243.136.68]:902 "EHLO limbo.dnsalias.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 27 Dec 2001 12:33:46 -0500 Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 19:33:36 +0200 (EET) From: Timo Jantunen To: cc: Subject: Re: Configure.help editorial policy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl wrote: >> Most disk sizes are an unholy mixture of the two >> that deserves a stake through the heart, >> where 1 GB = 1,024,000,000 bytes. > "Are"?? > > I see several good people spout this particular type of nonsense > here. If I interpret "are" to mean that that is the unit > disk manufacturers use, then it is false - as far as I know > no manufacturer uses this. How about IBM. According to the datasheet at http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.htm Deskstar 120GXP with 120GB capacity has 24125472 sectors (123522416640 bytes). That is 123.5GB if G=10^9 but 120.6GB if G=10^6*2^10 (and merely 115.0GB if G=2^30). Horrible? Yes. (The same is true for 40GB and 80GB versions of 120GXP, and my (older model) 30GB and 40GB IBM drives.) > Let us look at Maxtor. They are so friendly to give disk size > as part of the type. > Maxtor 91728D8 - 17280442368 bytes, 17280 MB, 17.2 GB > Maxtor 93652U8 - 36529274880 bytes, 36529 MB, 36.5 GB > Maxtor 96147H6 - 61473226752 bytes, 61473 MB, 61.4 GB > > You see that the number of GB claimed by the manufacturer is > just (number of megabytes)/1000. > There is no 2.4% difference that could justify your strange claim. So Maxtor lies 7.37% while IBM lies only 4.86%? BTW does anybody else remember when this insanity started? I seem to remember that in the begining of the 90's some manufacturers re-defined (binary) MB as 1000kB and others had to follow (most likely because stupid buyers usually bought the drive with 2.4% bigger figure without realizing it was the same size as the other.) > Andries // / - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/