Disk capacities
Re Daniel Berstein's inquiry about the actual sizes of hard disk drives:
Some years ago, when I was working for a major trade magazine, the
convention was 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes, and 1 Kilobyte (with a capital K) =
1024 bytes.
I'm not in that business any more, but if the convention still holds, then 1
megabyte would be 1 million bytes, and 1 Megabyte (capitalized) would be
1,048,576 bytes (not 1,024,000) But 1 Megabyte would still be 1,000
Kilobytes. (If you don't recognize that strange figure, get out your handy
dandy pocket calculator and see what 2 raised to the 20th power is.)
By extension, 1 gigabyte would be 1 billion bytes, and 1 Gigabyte would be
1,073,741,824 bytes, or 2 to the 30th power.
The Society for Technical Writers and Publishers (STWP), which I think has
changed its name to something more general, would have the latest official
information on this matter. I don't recall what the new name is, but a good
technical library would have the information.
Wally Riley
wryly at mindspring.com
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