The Great Capacity Swindle

[nBit7]

Not Really a Swindle....  
Heres a explanation from wikipedia.  
"Hard disk drive manufacturers specify disk capacity using the SI prefixes mega-, giga- and tera-, and their abbreviations M, G and T. Byte is typically abbreviated B.

It Is a SWINDLE.

That wikipedia quote is deceptive and should be changed in my opinion.  (And I bet is has been changed many many times)
It implies that Hard drive manufactures have been rightfully using the SI standard since the beginning.  This is not the case, as only since around 2000 has the SI defined the use computer terms kM MB and GB as being 1000 not 1024.
There is a JEDEC standard that pre-dates this by many years that defines the 1024 usage.

All(?) Operating systems that use these storage devices use the 1024 bytes per kB standard.  How is it OK for Harddrive manufactures (or ISPs) to use a different standard.

The SI standards body did us all a big disservice by setting this silly standard.  The different named definitions (kiBi) should have been made to the decimal version not the binary.

[nBit7]

Well i disagree... the SI standards are made to differ in terms. KB is Kilo Byte and can be interped as 1000 Bytes. In SI standards it is totaly correct. However KiBiByte is Kilo Binary Byte and cannot be interped "the wrong way" it uses the binary number sequence. while KB can be using decimal number. And therefor not entirely correct...

Well I can't argue that KiB is NOW unambiguous.  However GB, MB, KB and kB are now as a result of SI, almost completely useless as they have set a standard that goes against decades of accepted usage.  The only Computer related system previous to 2000 that didn't use exclusively use 1024 was magnetic media.

It would have been fine if they set two new terms instead of redefining an accepted computer and electronics standard (and a JEDEC standard).  
eg: define KiB and KeB (i=bInary e= dEcial) or similar.  That way there would be no ambiguity when the SI standard was taken up, unlike what we have now with kB.

[nBit7]

At the end of the day I just hope that OSs don't start using the SI definitions as that would just wast more cycles to display the value.   As a power of 2 divide is only a left shift away.

[nBit7]

Yes they do. but when calculating anything above 1KB OS's multiply by 1000 making 1GB 102400Bytes instead of 1047576Bytes.

Which OSs?

An example from my winXP system:
filename: AmigaTribute.mp4
size: 20.6 MB (21,604,082 bytes)

21,604,082 bytes / 1024
= 21098.7 kBytes

21098 / 1024   (NOT 1000)
= 20.6 MB


I know there are some examples in the computer area where 1024 bytes = kb then 1000 = MB, GB have been done but they are a small minority

It would take an OS many more cycles to calculate the 1024 1000 1000 version vs a 1024 1024 1024 system.