[mythtv-users] OT: Size (MB) of Samsung HD501LJ drive?

[David Brodbeck]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 10/08/2007 08:58 PM, Michael Heironimus wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 04:32:29PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
>>   
>>> On Oct 8, 2007, at 4:27 PM, MythTV wrote:
>>>> Steven Adeff wrote:
>>>>       
>>>>> I'm thinking of adding two of these to my existing RAID5 array but
>>>>> want to make sure i won't have an issue. my current drives show a
>>>>> cfdisk size of 500105.25 (MB). If anyone has one of these drives and
>>>>> could let me know I'd much appreciate it!
>>>> Mine are all in a hardware raid 6, but they show up under the 3ware  
>>>> raid
>>>> tool as:
>>>>
>>>> SAMSUNG HD501LJ 465.76 GB
>>>>
>>>> I was a little surprised when I bought them that there was 35 gig
>>>> missing from what I was expecting.
>>>>       
>>> Probably they're using the "1 megabyte = 1 million bytes" convention.
>>>
>>> 465.76 * 1024 * 1024 = 488,384,758
>>>
>>> Probably rounds to 500,000,000 bytes if you look at it before  
>>> formatting, with a salesman's eyes, and squint a bit.
>>>     
>> You need another multiplier in there to make it come out right.
>>
>> 465.76G * 1024M/G * 1024k/M * 1024b/k = 500105991946 bytes

Oh, duh.  I shoulda had another cup of coffee. ;)


> And the salesman's eye isn't necessary, either:
> http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Info/Units/binary.html

Well, OK, but that strikes me as a retroactive justification.  Everyone
 pretty well agreed what a megabyte meant until the marketing
departments at drive manufacturers noticed they could put a bigger
number on the package if they divided by 1000 instead of 1024.  For a
while these were advertised with a slight caveat, e.g., as a "250
million byte" drive instead of "250 megabyte," presumably so no one
would sue for not getting what they paid for.  I guess now that the IEEE
has given them cover they feel they can dispense with that formality. ;)