Re: GB vs. MB (fwd)
Robert Glamm (glamm@mountains.ee.umn.edu)
Wed, 27 Nov 1996 23:41:08 -0600 (CST)
> reported. But that MB is million, not 2^20. If we insist on MB meaning 2^20,
> we only get 125.885MB/second. A similar problem occurs in other cases where
> mega is used in a frequency or 1/time context, such as Fast SCSI-2 being 10.0
> mega-transfers/second. With MB = 2^20 Fast SCSI-2 is only good for 9.54
> MB/second. We can't just move "mega" around without thinking in these
> contexts.
>
> Since there's no truly consistent way to view this, I don't really care that
> much which way it's reported, so long as a footnote clearly specifies which
> meaning pertains. Since I've been working with SCSI a lot lately, I'm just as
> happy with MB = million for storage devices since it keeps the time/space
> computation easy.
As a counterpoint, I'd still prefer MB = 2^20, for this reason:
% dd if=<file/device...> of=<...partition/disk> bs=1024 count=16384
There are still too many other devices out there that still use 2^10, 2^20,
etc. for kB, MB, etc. for me to want to change reported sizes for disks to
something scientific. Given the 2^x definition of prefixes it's easy to
determine what the above parameters for bs, count should be. With the 10^x
definition it'd be more complex.
--
"Honestly, it's like shooting | Bob Glamm H: +1 612 6239437 W: +1 612 6268981
fish in a barrel. Twice. With | URL: http://www-mount.ee.umn.edu/~glamm
an elephant gun. At point +-----------------------------------------------
blank range. In the head." -- from the BOFH files, part 6