this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
147 points (69.6% liked)

Technology

59166 readers
2327 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
147
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
210 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I often find myself explaining the same things in real life and online, so I recently started writing technical blog posts.

This one is about why it was a mistake to call 1024 bytes a kilobyte. It's about a 20min read so thank you very much in advance if you find the time to read it.

Feedback is very much welcome. Thank you.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] meekah 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

sure, but one of the intrinsic properties of binary data is that it is in binary sized chunks. you won't find a hard drive that stores 1000 bits of data per chunk.

[โ€“] abhibeckert 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The "chunk" is often 32,768 bits these days and it never matches the actual size of the drive.

A 120 GB drive might actually be closer to 180 GB when it's brand new (if it's a good drive - cheap ones might be more like 130 GB)... and will get smaller as the drive wears out with normal use. I once had a HDD go from 500 GB down to about 50 GB before I stopped using it - it was a work computer and only used for email so 50 GB was when it actually started running out of space.

HDD / SSD sellers are often accused of being stingy - but the reality is they're selling a bigger drive than what you're told you're getting.