[X4U] 160 gb drive read as 127.87 gb

[Doug McNutt]

At 20:32 -0700 10/28/05, • Paul E. Miller • wrote:
>My firewire drive is a 160 GB drive and upon reformatting it to use
>as a storage/backup the newly formatted drive is now listed as:
>Capacity: 127.87 GB.

There is a difference between computer jargon and scientific usage of the metric prefixes k, M, and G. In the Systeme Internationale (SI) they are factors of 1000 (10). Computer folks often use K -> 1024, M -> (1024)^2 and G -> (1024)^3. The difference you quote is too large to be explained by all of that but you should know about it anyway. Merchants will always quote the number that looks bigger.

<http://www.physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html>   says 100 GiB is a bit more than 107 GB

Note also that it's G, M, and k in the SI. b means bit; B means byte (8 bits). In the SI, K is a Kelvin unit of temperature though it has been used in upper case to mean 1000 (10) of an unspecified something. (ohms of resistance and grams of pot come to mind.)

The meaning of the .87 part of 127.87 is completely obscure. Is it 87/100 or 870/1024?

-- 
--> Marriage and kilo are troubled words. Turmoil results when centuries-old usage is altered in specialized jargon <--.