fdisk partition table representation

vofka · 06-26-2009, 05:14 PM

Hello! Can anybody give me the answer on the following question:
I have the disk partition size 1G or 1024MB
But when i run the fdisk its receive the following info:
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hdd: 1073 MB,1073741824 bytes
......
As i understand this is another representation of the 1024 value in another counting system. Please explain me how its calculates, what is it a system?

mostlyharmless · 06-26-2009, 05:19 PM

1024*1024*1024=1073741824 bytes
It has to do with K standing for kilo, which is 1000 base 10, but 1024 or 2^10 for KB; same with MB for megabytes and GB for gigabytes...

pixellany · 06-26-2009, 07:09 PM

Kilo to normal people means 10^3 or 1000

Computer people are not normal--they evolved with two toes on each foot, and can only count in base two. But they WANT to be normal, so they tried to get as close as possible. The figured out that 2^9.9658 was VERY close, but then they discovered that they could not make the CPU do non-integer exponentiation. Sadly, they had to settle for 2^10 = 1024.

Life is full of compromises........

vofka · 06-27-2009, 03:20 PM

I understood! Thank you for reply!