[Ti] New 1 ghz TiPB delivered today!

[Kynan Shook]

John Griffin <jwegriffin at mac.com> writes:
> The Hard Drive is 55.88 Gig - not 60! Where did all that space go? 
> Even my
> 60 Gig backup drive has almost 58 Gig usable.

Well, somebody probably already answered this, but since I'm on digest, 
I don't get all the latest as it happens...
The answer is not so much formatting as it is marketing.  The marketing 
figures use 1 KB = 1000 Bytes, which is technically the "correct" usage 
of the term Kilo, except that Kilo in computer usage is generally taken 
to be 1024, or 2^10, since that's an easier number for computers to 
deal with.  So, 60 GB (with the scientific Giga definition)= 60 * 1000 
* 1000 * 1000 Bytes = 60,000,000,000 Bytes, which becomes 55.88 GB 
(with the computer definition) = 55.88 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 
60,000,000,000 Bytes.

If you look in many versions of Apple System Profiler (including the 
one in OS X) it will list the size and/or capacity in terms of both 1KB 
= 1024 Bytes and 1 KB = 1000 Bytes.  My drive (advertised as 20 GB) is 
really 21 GB in marketing terms, and 18.62 GB in computer terms.
Many drives will include a little bit extra (like this 21 and not 20 GB 
drive) for varying reasons; perhaps it's easier to put 21 GB in there 
instead of 20 GB, or sometimes there's extra given to allow for factory 
defects in the disk to be mapped out when the disk is physically 
assembled and tested, etc.


Kynan Shook
kshook at mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/kshook/index.html