3 ms·
Sectors are 512, 4096, or another power of 2 because of a combination of 8 bit characters (the lowest addressable unit of storage) and powers of 2 being more na
by mjevans 8y ago
Sectors are 512, 4096, or another power of 2 because of a combination of 8 bit characters (the lowest addressable unit of storage) and powers of 2 being more natural to fully address when working on a binary based processing/addressing model.
It isn't completely disingenuous to talk about intra-systems communication in terms of 'million bits' (engineering mega, not binary 'mega', bits) but it is obtuse and full of marketing spin.
- garmaine 8y agoIt's the official SI standard for data measurement. I don't know how using the standard is obtuse marketing spin.
- Dylan16807 8y agoBecause roughly nothing that measures data files uses that standard. Using the wrong standard can easily be misleading.
- garmaine 8y agoI’m not sure the entire storage and network technology industries count as “roughly nothing.”
- wtallis 8y agoI've never seen any source indicate that SI defines units for data measurement. I've only seen such standards coming from organizations like IEEE, IEC and JEDEC, and those standards have not been all that consistent over the past few decades.
- int_19h 8y agoThe question in this case is the meaning of the prefix, not the unit to which it applies. SI defines these prefixes as powers of 10, regardless of what it applies to.
- jrwr 8y agoand don't always assume that they stored all 8 bits, some custom loaders used custom sizes!