y_p_w wrote:
Jürgen Exner wrote:
wrote:
[SD cards]
1. Why do they multiply in the order of
1,2,4,8,16,32, etc. Why not in nice number like 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50
GB, etc (metric)?
Because the native language of the computers we have today is binary, not
decimal.
Hard drives come in non-binary sizes, and sometimes oddball ones at
that.
Apples and oranges. There is quite some difference between the internal
workings of a HD and a memory chip. For a harddrive the numbers of heads,
tracks, sectors, and disks introduce factors, that are determined by
physical characteristics, not logical considerations.
On a memory chip to supply 10x still requries 16x of items of whatever you
are looking at. So why waste waste the remaining 6 items?
In fact, published capacity is in decimal megabytes, and users
complain that their systems (which state binary megabytes) show less.
My 40GB HD says it has a 34.9GB capacity.
Old news.
jue