• Synthead@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    KB is measured in powers of 10, where KiB is measured in powers of 2:

    However, this error is so common that most folks will know what you mean. It’ll only really get you in trouble when you’re accurately comparing sizes of storage and data. There’s a good chance it won’t really matter unless you’re working with code or archiving disks.

    This is also why a “2 TB” hard drive is “smaller than 2 TB.” 2 terabytes is 1.819 tebibytes. Even Windows will incorrectly call TiB units TB and terabyte, so people have often carried a conspiracy theory that drive manufacturers “short you,” or that the missing data somehow has to do with enormous file system metadata.

    • stingpie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There are actually two standards here. Kibibytes was introduced later as a way to reduce confusion cause by the uninitiated thinking the JEDEC standard refered to powers of ten instead of two. That’s why I’m saying that 64 kilobytes is equal to 2^16 bytes, because that’s what the original standard was.