Thursday 29 July 2010

Gibibytes against Speicherschmu

Gibibytes against Speicherschmu


Finally, a large hard drive! The first joy of purchase for many consumers in perplexity lenovo thinkpad t61 battery proposes to miss - but suddenly a few gigabytes after connection. Behind this lies a simple arithmetic error that you must know.



On the package are 500 gigabytes given space, but once the new hard drive connected to the computer, the system displays only 465 gigabytes. The solution is both simple and complicated: The difference arises because manufacturers of storage devices and OS developers calculate the storage space in different ways. The larger the memory, the stronger the difference in the weight - for a one-terabyte hard drive are already ten percent. An additional annoyance: When you format the disk is lost, another small part of the space.


Many computer owners are assuming that 1000 bytes in a kilobyte and 1000 kilobytes a megabyte. Finally, in 1000 meters and a kilometer and 1000 grams per kilogram. In the information technology but is expected otherwise, "says Gerhard Henninger, Speaker for multimedia standards in the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (DKE) in Frankfurt am Main. "Computer work with two well-taken place with orders of magnitude lenovo thinkpad t60 battery, so a kilobyte is not 1000, but from 1024 bytes."


Just as car manufacturers, the size of the displacement usually round up to leave, many manufacturers of storage media - hard drives, flash memory, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and so on - are their products like a little bigger. They do this by specifying the size in decimal place-in of two. They make so 1000 bytes to a kilobyte.


From the perspective of a computer but results 1024 bytes a kilobyte. So the operating system would need a few kilobytes more to come on those giga-or terabyte number that is specified by the manufacturer.


Since the difference 1000-1024 Byte only 2.4 per cent, is the difference in the kilobyte range not so much on. In a megabytes makes the difference between the two calculation methods from but already 4.9 percent, at one gigabyte will have 7.4 percent.


If you are in terabyte-size media anschafft can see that the details of memory and operating system vendors differ by about one-tenth. "There is no plausible technical reason to specify the size is not technically correct. Maybe the producers make the sake of simplicity, "says Henninger.


To avoid confusion, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is proposed, based in Geneva in 1996, new names. When the size of a storage medium as a power to base ten are given, they should be marked with the familiar name, so kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), Gigabyte (GB), lenovo thinkpad t61 battery terabyte (TB). When the size is calculated in the binary system should, as a second syllable "bi" stand for two - so kibibyte (KiB), mebibyte (MiB), gibibyte (GiB), Tebibyte (TiB) and so on.


The names have, however - as in the world of standardization does not occur often - in everyday life can not prevail, "says Hans Harcken, an expert on magnetic media at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig. The units to end confusion by-law, DKE-Speaker Henninger considers unnecessary: "We already have enough standards."


With the size and the prices at which storage media are to have these days, the difference was not a major problem, Benjamin Benz says of the magazine c't. Whether one terabyte hard drive, which currently costs about 75 €, now 900 gigabytes or terabytes of 1.02 is large - "until I have this plate full, anyway there's already a new, cheaper." Benz advises consumers, therefore, to not upset about differences: "He who receives an Zwolfzimmerwohnung, complains not even know if the hall half a square meter is less than promised."