Gibibyte vs Gigabyte

[xXCrossfireXx]

To start, if this is an insanely stupid question that I wrote because I've just seen loads of bullshit, please don't ridicule me

So I've just seen this thing called Gibibyte, mebibyte, etc, which sounds like the result of someone with a speech impediment trying to say actual metric terms. Now apparently according to Google and a lot of sites I've been lied to my whole tech life, and 1000 megabytes makes a gigabyte, and 1000 kilobytes makes a megabyte, etc. So apparently these ibi bytes are octal however, and there's 1024 mebibyte in a Gibibyte, etc. But if this were true, every tech text book would be lying, every tech professor would be lying, and this whole storage forum would be one enormous pile of digital bullshit, not to mention Windows and every programming language defining giga, mega, etc to be base 8.

So is that stupid ibi name really true, and I've been lied to, is it a bunch of crap, or are these two storage types both base 8?

 

[thor220]

Technically both are the same thing, just different ways to measure. Operating systems like Mac use GiB to measure disk space and it is generally more accurate than GB. Windows on the other hand calculates GB as 1000 MB, which isn't entirely accurate.

 

[CelicaGT]

What you have read is true and the terms are used loosely interchangeably and, incorrectly

 

[Yimman]

xXCrossfireXx,

Both terms are correct. There are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, however, most people think of a kilobyte as 1,000 bytes. This is also true for a gigabyte which is though of as a million bytes. A gigabyte actually has 1,073,741,824 bytes.

It is not that all the tech books were lying, but rather that they are converting the numbers into something that is more human readable. Consider if you have a 250 GB hard drive, it is easier for humans to think of 250 GB as 250 billion bytes than than 268,435,456,000 bytes.

Yimman

 

[Anakha00]

CelicaGT is the only correct answer really, as the other two answers have fallen into the same group of people that incorrectly interchange them as CelicaGT mentioned. The thing to remember when using *Giga*byte and *Gibi*byte, is that these are prefixes. Giga is a prefix in the International Standard of Units, SI, which means 1000³, whereas Gibi is a *binary* prefix from a technical standard which means 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. The real problem comes from people using these two very different prefixes interchangeably and incorrectly like CelicaGT said.

Also, Windows does NOT use 1000 MB as 1 GB, which is why when you get a 1 TB hard drive from a manufacturer it shows up in Windows as ~931 GB. This is because Windows identifies a GiB as GB incorrectly, whether they decided to just drop the " i " or whatever. Windows does correctly calculate the storage space in binary though, as manufacturers do give their storage space accurately, i.e. 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes and Windows then divides that by 1 GiB, 1,073,741,824 and gives the resulting space in GB, around 931 GB.

 

[xXCrossfireXx]

OK I'm more confused than I am before.

Can I just say 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte, and 1024 gigabytes in a terabyte and call it a day?

 

[Anakha00]

If you're talking about file sizes in Windows, then by all means call them that. Like I said, Windows labels file sizes in KB, MB, GB, where they should be KiB, MiB, GiB if they were to follow the standard. This is why if you look at at the properties of a file that Windows identifies as 12,617 KB in the folder, it will say 12.3 MB (12,919,247 bytes).

Windows may label them as KB and MB, but the real unit names should be KiB and MiB because they are not really in KB and MB units. If they were really in KB and MB units they would simply be 12,919 KB and 12.9 MB.

 

[CelicaGT]

If you try Linux you'll see it uses the correct terminology, whereas Win(X) must appeal to the masses with their easy maths..

 

[xXCrossfireXx]

So Windows, incorrect, Linux, correct, does this mean languages like Java are incorrect?