The decimal system is far from ‘more correct’ when describing a device that exists only in binary.
A bit is a binary object, and the basis for all space measurements in computers, so it stands to reason that every measurement based on it (byte, mega-byte, giga-byte, tera-byte, etc) would also be part of that binary system - it would have to be a power of two.
True, but disk-based storage devices are not exclusively binary any more. From the NIST website:
Not true. Can you explain how a hard disk is a device that “exists only in binary”. A hard disk is as binary as a lightbulb or a metre.
Not that it would make any difference but if you think a single bit is represented on the disk somewhere on its surface by a single bit of magnetised or not magnetised matter, you are quite mistaken. There are a number of levels of coding and error-protection and the bits may be encoded in groups and by transition of states. But, as I say, this makes no difference because we are just counting. No more and no less. Counting a distance in miles or in Km is correct in both cases and says nothing about whether that distance is here or there. Counting is counting and all numbering systems are just as correct so long as we understand each other.
The fact is that the consensus when it comes to hard drives is to use the decimal system. That is what all manufacturers use and that is what makes most sense. The decimal system was invented for a reason which is ease of calculations. If I am receiving a video stream of 150,000 bytes/second and I want to know how much video I can fit in a hard disk, I want a straight division, I do not want to take a course in computer science to be able to do that. Do you really want people to have to learn binary to use computers?
The fact is that there is NO authority which says hard disks should be measured in anything else than decimal.
Actually, sorry to disappoint you but that IS how computer monitors are measured. More precisely, they are measured to the edge of the GLASS so it makes little sense for someone to “just put a bigger shell on” because all they would be doing would be to cover up more monitor. LCDs ARE measured by viewable area which is why a 17" LCD roughly equals a 18 - 19" CRT for screen area.
Not all screens have the same aspect ratio. The most common is indeed 4:3 for CRT’s except LCD’s commonly use 5:4 and now 16:9 for widescreen. However, they all use the same diagonal measurement.
You are quite mistaken on several points. You might as well sue the lumber industry because a 2x4 does not measure 2" x 4". Just like with CRTs they are nominal sizes and people understand it.
Furthermore, CRTs have always, since the early days of TV, been measured by the overall size of the tube (not the case that holds it as you seem to believe). I do not see anything wrong with that and I do not see what is so hard to understand about it. Things have several measurements, not just one. You just need to understand what the meaning of each is.
Urban Ranger, you are off by orders of magnitude here – whether one is a supporter of decimal or binary powers.
A giga is not a mega mega to anyone. It’s a kilo mega. The current argument is whether a giga is 10^9 or 2^30, but I think that we can all agree that it’s not 10^12 or 2^40!!!
We don’t measure light bulbs in meters, and we don’t measure hard disks in lumens. Hard disks are measured in units applicable to them: the binary units of bits and bytes.
They are all flux reversals, all binary, and saying that they are ‘grouped together’ does not make the system less binary. The single bit does exist on the drive as magnetized matter, and there isn’t any non-magnetized matter, because the drive relies on flux reversal. The fact that you cannot physically reference a single bit because of the ‘coding and error-protection’ and the ‘clusters’ doesn’t mean the bits are non-existent. The whole deal is base two. Your computer deals with the hard disk entirely in binary. Why is it do you think that sector sizes are powers of two, such as 512? Or if base two is so unimportant, why isn’t a byte equal to 10 bits so that you can use decimal counting?
Use decimal representations all you want, but understand that you are dealing with numbers that are powers of two. You’ve already been doing so with RAM for years, despite the fact that RAM has encoding and error-protection. Why fight it tooth and nail when it comes to hard disks?
Fine, then use it accurately. Represent the actual storage space on the drive as a decimal number. This half-assed job of rounding it off to ‘nice even powers of ten’ is just not correct.
I would prefer that people understood binary and at least some of how a computer works before they use it.
Nobody’s saying the measurment should be represented in something other than decimal. However, there are apparently quite a few people who would like that decimal number they slap on the drive to be accurate.
And right now, they are not.
I will not go into the rest of your post although I could argue you are wrong on many points but I have to say this part is completely wrong. The lawsuit and the argument is not that the numbers are rounded off, the lawsuit and the argument is that the plaintiffs say 1 GB= 2^30 which is an unsustainable argument. 1GB strictly speaking is 10^9 Bytes and that is the customary usage in the hard disk industry. The plaintiffs don’t have a leg to stand on.
Well, it doesn’t seem to me that you can prove me wrong, since those of us who actually design this stuff have been using 2^30 all this time, since it’s actually correct.
I can’t name an engineer of computer electronics who doesn’t use base two when dealing with storage, memory, registers, or anything else based in bits and bytes.
The decimal number currently being used is not accurate, no matter how much you like it.
catsix, you are playing around. First you say
and now you say
What you think or have been doing is irrelevant. The facts are:
1- There is NO law or official standard supporting your position and there are standards supporting the decimal Giga = 10^9 as have been quoted
2- The hard disk industry has used the decimal Giga (10^9) consistently
3- The plaintiffs allege they were misled. How so? They are not engineers, they are the general public. The fact than engineers understand other forms means nothing. The plaintiffs allege enough knowledge to know about how base two logig is used in addressing in computers but they allege ignorance of the fact that this is not the way hard disk capacities are quoted. The plaintiffs cannot allege ignorance and then claim knowledge in the same sentence. They are playing dumb. It comes down to “But we thought 1 GB = 2^30!”. Ruling: You were wrong. Next case.
I think the correct size, measured in bits at its lowest level should be what is advertised on the drive. I think that it’s fair to represent that number in decimal notation although it is always a power of two.
I think it’s deceptive to have the label on the box say one thing and the actual size of the drive as recognized by the computer be something smaller.
They were misled by being told the size of the drive was X and yet when they plugged it in and tried to use it, the actual size was Y, where Y < X.
They don’t really have to know about base-two to understand that the package said X, they actually got Y, and Y < X. They are understandably feeling cheated because of this.
I’m not dancing around anything, sailor. I have no problem with representing the size of a hard disk as 1 GB = 1073741824 B, in decimal, instead of writing 1000000000000000000000000000000b as the size of the drive. People can more easily recognize a number written in decimal, even if it is the expression of a number actually derived in binary.
It’s done with IP addresses.
No one has mentioned cluster size in this thread, unless I missed it. The amount of usable disk space is affected by the file system in use (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, etc.) and the size of the clusters they support. Basically, any file has to use a multiple of clusters, the size of which can be quite large. If a file system has, say, 4 KB clusters, a 1 KB file will use the whole cluster, and no other file can exist there, so that 3 KB go unused. This inefficiency is unavoidable, but it has a lot more limiting on the capacity of a disk than the alleged deceptive trade practices.
For all any normal person would want to know about hard drives, see http://www.pctechguide.com/04disks.htm. This is a great site for hardware in general.
Thanks for the info, but it was mentioned in detail by at least two posters on page one, Roches and myself.
Incidentally, the rigid cluster size data loss is avoidable with some more sophisticated low-level disk allocation software. About 10 years ago, Novell came out with a neat sub-cluster scheme on their servers just for this purpose.
I’m not up on the internal, low-level workings of today’s Windows, but I doubt if this is used, for two reasons. One – Microsoft has never been on the cutting edge of innovation and rarely introduces good routines unless there is extreme pressure from the market first, and two – in this day of cheap disk storage and the trend for even more cheap storage, it seems simpler just to get a bigger drive and accept the wasted space than mess with more complex software.
It’s probably for this reason that you don’t hear much about entire disk compression schemes these days.
catsix, yes, we know what you think. Unfortunately for you, that is quite irrelevant as to the case the plaintiffs have presented in court. The plaintiffs allege they were misled. I say they were NOT misled because:
1- There is NO law or official standard supporting the view that 1 GB = 2^30 but there are plenty of standards supporting the decimal Giga = 10^9 as have been quoted
2- The prefix Giga is used in all other branches of science to mean 10^9
3- The hard disk industry has used the decimal Giga (10^9) consistently
Now, please explain to me where and how the plaintiffs were misled by anything else than their own ignorance. What did the defendants do to mislead them? Please explain this because I do not get it.
What next?
Homeowners decide to sue the lumber industry because the 2x4 studs in their home do not measure 4 inches.
Car owners decide to sue the car industry because the model 2003 actually came out in 2002
Moviegoers sue Disney because they fail to post a disclaimer saying Mickey Mouse is only a fantasy and real mice cannot talk.
Where does it end?
This case is a non-starter. It is probably brought by a pack of lawyers rather than by any consumers who realy felt they were misled.
So you have decided that what I think doesn’t count because you think something else.
Last time I checked, this is why disputes get argued in front of a judge and/or jury who makes the final decision.
No What I think and what you think matter just as little. It is what the judge thinks. Now I am the attorney for the defendant and here are my arguments (which I have presented several times already):
1- There is NO law or official standard supporting the view that 1 GB = 2^30 but there are plenty of standards supporting the decimal Giga = 10^9 as have been quoted
2- The prefix Giga is used in all other branches of science to mean 10^9
3- The hard disk industry has used the decimal Giga (10^9) consistently
4- The plaintiffs were misled only by their own ignorance. The defendants did not do anything to mislead them.
Ok, you are the attorney for the plaintiffs. Your turn. What say you?
Catsix, the problem with your argument is that you fail to explain just why decimal is inferior to binary, or why the general public should assume that hard drive sizes are measured in binary and not decimal.
The best you can do is say that both systems of measurement do an equally good job of listing hard drive sizes. One is not superior to the other. Ergo, there is no reason for Joe Average to assume a measurement in binary rather than decimal.
Think of it this way: You can measure distances equally well with either miles or kilometers. For the average layperson, one is not necessarily better than the other. Should people be able to go to Europe and tool around on side streets at 60 kilometers per hour, and then claim innocence for speeding because they thought the speed limit signs were posted in mph?
Your speeding analogy is flawed, SPOOFE. I like this better: suppose you were driving around and saw that the speed limit was 60 mph. So you drive at 60 mph, and promptly get pulled over by a cop for speeding. You complain that you were going at 60 mph, but he takes you to the speed limit sign, and you see that the fine print says that it’s 60 (base 8) mph.
I’d like a cite that shows that the hard disk industry has used decimal SI prefixes consistently.
And you demand that because you have reason to believe otherwise? I’d like to know why you have reason to believe otherwise or if you have no reason but you just feel like making others work for you for nothing. I’ll tell you what: for every cite you present showing a hard disk showing 1GB = 2^30 I will show you two showing 1GB= 10^9. And I don’t have to go very far because I have a whole bunch of disks at hand and they all use 1GB= 10^9. Right now I have at hand an 80 MB and a 200 MB hard disk and the both use 10^9. I have assembled and repaired countless computers since the days of 10 MB hard disks and I cannot remember anything else. Do you have evidence to prove otherwise? In other words, if you have good reason to believe otherwise I am willing to spend some time finding evidence but if you think I have nothing better to do than spend time on this just because you feel like challenging what I said for no good reason, then no, I will not do it. I would rather play with my pizzle for a while. Does anyone else say 1GB=2^30 has been consistently used by hard disk manufacturers? I believe you are alone in this so it is your burden to prove it. In other words: tell me what your position is and why. Don’t just ask me to prove mine when you have nothing better to offer.
BTW, it is the premise of the lawsuit that computer manufacturers (OEMs) used 1GB=10^9. Are you saying the disks themselves used 1GB=2^30 and the OEMs used 10^9 so they could quote a different and slightly higer number? Because that is even less likely to happen.
They do need to know about the units they’re comparing. They don’t have to know the historical why one MB is larger than the other, but they do need to know that MB refers to two different units - and the fine print on a hard drive box usually explains it.
If you weigh out an ounce of gold at home using a postage scale, then you take it to a jeweler and he tells you it’s only 0.8 ounces, have you been cheated? Of course not… “ounce” refers to two separate units, one of which weighs more than the other. It’s your job to know that gold is measured in troy ounces.