I become annoyed whenever I hear people complain about hard drive manufacturers’ alleged misuse of units and greed. They are not misusing units; they are correct. Let us examine:
kilometre = 1000 metres kilobyte = 1000 bytes
The confusion is propagated by the JEDEC Memory Standards’s 100B.01, which attempts to redefine the SI—and indeed metric—systems to use base two (after over 400 years)—or to add a definition using the same prefixes. It defines the following ¹ ²:
| Digital Storage Capacity | Serial Transfer Rates |
|---|---|
| kilo: 10241 | kilo: 10001 |
| mega: 10242 | mega: 10002 |
| giga: 10243 | giga: 10003 |
I think that is moronic. It convinced most consumers, who became convinced hard drive manufacturers warp the definitions with greedy intentions. IEC 60027 has been an international standard since 1998 and is more rational:
| Metric | IEC |
|---|---|
| kilo: 10001 | kibi: 10241 |
| mega: 10002 | mebi: 10241 |
| giga: 10003 | gibi: 10243 |
| tera: 10004 | tebi: 10244 |
| peta: 10005 | pebi: 10245 |
| exa: 10006 | exbi: 10246 |
| zetta: 10007 | zebi: 10247 |
| yotta: 10008 | yobi: 10248 |
It is that simple. JEDEC Memory Standards intends to change a standard to fit a misconception—trying to reduce confusion by increasing ambiguity and appealing to gullibility. SI is older, as is IEC 60027; more importantly, they do not contradict each other; and more importantly, they make sense. I favour IEC 60027.
¹ Although I used the expanded prefixes for contrast and simplicity, note that JEDEC 100B.01 discourages that and prefers using 80MB, 24GB, etc.
² I wanted to read more about JEDEC 100B.01, but the definition costs 71USD See the publication list.
