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At some point, a kilobyte was 1024 bytes. Now, a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, and 1024 bytes is a kibibyte. I mean, it does make sense. But it just sounds off to me
by collectively 9y ago
At some point, a kilobyte was 1024 bytes. Now, a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, and 1024 bytes is a kibibyte.
I mean, it does make sense. But it just sounds off to me.
- seanp2k2 9y agoHard drive manufacturers have been doing this for decades. This is why the “80GB” drives were 74.5GB in Windows. It’s more complicated with SSDs: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/7 https://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/7 EDIT: the official “kibibyte” was standardized in 1998: https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html so almost 20 years ago. Blame Windows and HDD mfgs for sticking with the SI definitions.
- sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg 9y agoYea, bad bad windows for following standards. The SI prefixes are well established before 1998 and the cause for this brainmelt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix
- collectively 9y agoWell to be fair “GB” could refer to either prefix.
- CodesInChaos 9y agoWindows (at least up to 8) does not follow the SI standard. It uses KB, MB, GB but converts using 1024. Which has funny consequences, like 999MB being smaller 0.94GB.