Computer memory and storage

[dyresand]

This didn't hit me until now but i have a 32gb flash drive and it only has 
29.7 but in reality it is a 32gb drive but i would love that 2 extra gb though.

[vorlon13]

I can remember when 4000 bytes was an enormous amount of storage.

Later on in the mid/late 80s the boss bought our department a 40 megabyte external drive for our shared computer, it was like the Gods had bestowed a blessing upon us.

Hell, Windows probably wastes/loses/corrupts/despoils 40 megabytes or more every time a computer boots up these days.

[vorlon13]

Imagine trying to achieve 4000 bytes with vacuum tube technology.

[I_am_not_mafia]

This didn't hit me until now but i have a 32gb flash drive and it only has 
29.7 but in reality it is a 32gb drive but i would love that 2 extra gb though.

1) You do use that extra 2 GB
2) If you devoted that extra 2GB to storage you wouldn't be able to find anything on the drive

[ignoramus]

correct... it's MB tax you pay! hehe

It's used to pay for new hospitals, roads, but mainly partitioning, FAT, etc

[pocaracas]

This didn't hit me until now but i have a 32gb flash drive and it only has 
29.7 but in reality it is a 32gb drive but i would love that 2 extra gb though.

32GB are 32 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 bytes = 32,000,000,000 bytes. (you know how the decimal system works, right?)

32GiB are 32 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes = 34,359,738,368 bytes. (they call these Gibibytes)

32,000,000,000 bytes /1024 /1024 /1024 = 29.8GiB.


Your computer counts GiBs (and calls them GB), the storage manufacturers count GBs. They're referring to different things and make it sound dishonest... yeah... welcome to the real world.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I can remember when 4000 bytes was an enormous amount of storage.

Later on in the mid/late 80s the boss bought our department a 40 megabyte external drive for our shared computer, it was like the Gods had bestowed a blessing upon us.

Hell, Windows probably wastes/loses/corrupts/despoils 40 megabytes or more every time a computer boots up these days.

Sophomore year in HS, 1982. Computer "lab" was equipped wih Commodore PETs -- 4K RAM, no HD at all, aand I/O was a cassette-drive -- took five minutes to load that 4k BASIC program you'd been working on, and five minute to save your debug -- in a fifty-minute class..



My first personal was a C-64 -- knew the hardwired programming language, easy money. Able to PEEK and POKE? I could write some stuff!

My first PC, three years later, was a 286, with twin-40HDs, 12 Mhz clock-speed (with the "turbo" button pressed in!) ... and an amber display, until I upgraded to VGA, with (iirc) 16 colors. DOS was a big curve, but with Norton's guide, it wasn't that bad.

The phone I carry in my pocket could kill any assortment of fifty of those computers, and still do everything it's designed to do -- take and make calls, take and store photos, record every text I've made over the last six months, etc.

[Jackalope]

You know those newfangled MP3 files kids these days use to play their devil music?

Back in my day, you couldn't store more than one of them on the typical hard drive. Didn't really matter, as they hadn't been invented, and the CPU was several orders of magnitude to small to decode them in real time.

If that weren't enough, I/O subsystems were far too slow, and memory capacity was far too little to buffer them.

Ah, the good old days.

I remember as late as 1990 working on systems that stored 5MB, used up a sixth of a standard rack, and weighed several hundred pounds. Those drives - usually only one - were connected to systems that would run the business end of businesses such as a parts warehouse or small factory.

[Jackalope]

*that's the size of the drive alone. The computer filled the rest of the rack, sometimes two.

I remember the first time I encountered toroidal memory - 4K on a 18" square board.

[pocaracas]