Western Digital is trying to redefine the word "RPM"
[...] new complaint is that Western Digital calls 7200RPM drives "5400 RPM Class"—and the drives' own firmware report 5400 RPM via the SMART interface.
[...] At first blush, this might seem like a non-issue—who wouldn't prefer a drive with a faster spindle speed? Unfortunately, faster spindles don't just mean potentially lower seek latency—they also come with a sharp increase in both noise generation and power consumption.
That increase in noise and power is what got many users on the trail of Western Digital's fake 5,400rpm spindle speed in the first place—those users purchased drives which they expected to roll low and slow, but they got more noise, heat, and power consumption than they expected.
[...] When we reached out to Western Digital in the course of researching this story, a representative confirmed the various forum-goers' and Redditor's conclusions—that is to say, "5400 RPM class" does not actually mean that a drive spins at 5,400rpm.
For select products, Western Digital has published RPM speed within a "class" or "performance class" for numerous years rather than publishing specific spindle speeds. We also fine-tune select hard drive platforms and the related HDD characteristics to create several different variations of such platforms to meet different market or application needs. By doing so, we are able to leverage our economies of scale and pass along those savings to our customers. As with every Western Digital product, our product details, which include power, acoustics and performance (data transfer rate), are tested to meet the specifications provided on the product's data sheet and marketing collateral.
RPM means revolutions (or rotations) per minute, in some circles.
I detect another class action lawsuit forming. Save your receipts.
Previously: Seagate Caught Using SMR in Barracuda Compute and Desktop Drives
Western Digital Shingled Out in Class Action Lawsuit
Related Stories
SMR hard drive encoding is generally higher density but slower than traditional perpendicular recording.
Seagate 'submarines' SMR into 3 Barracuda drives and a Desktop HDD – Blocks and Files
Some Seagate Barracuda Compute and Desktop disk drives use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology which can exhibit slow data write speeds. But Seagate documentation does not spell this out.
Yesterday we reported Western Digital has submarined SMR drives into certain WD Red NAS drives. The company acknowledged this when we asked but it has not documented the use of SMR in the WD Red drives. This has left many users frustrated and speculating for the reason why the new drives are not working properly in their NAS set-ups. Since this article was first published Toshiba has also confirmed the undocumented use of SMR in some desktop hard drives.
[...] Seagate markets the Barracuda Compute drives as fast and dependable. Yet it is the nature of SMR drives that data rewrites can be slow.
When we asked Seagate about the Barracudas and the Desktop HDD using SMR technology, a spokesperson told us: "I confirm all four products listed use SMR technology."
In a follow-up question, we asked why isn't this information is not explicit in Seagate's brochures, data sheets and product manuals – as it is for Exos and Archive disk drives?
Seagate's spokesperson said: "We provide technical information consistent with the positioning and intended workload for each drive."
Western Digital gets sued for sneaking SMR disks into its NAS channel
All three of the surviving conventional hard drive vendors—Toshiba, Western Digital, and Seagate—have gotten caught sneaking disks featuring Shingled Magnetic Recording technology into unexpected places recently. But Western Digital has been the most brazen of the three, and it's been singled out for a class action lawsuit in response.
Although all three major manufacturers quietly added SMR disks to their desktop hard drive line-up, Western Digital is the only one so far to slip them into its NAS (Network Attached Storage) stack. NAS drives are expected to perform well in RAID and other multiple disk arrays, whether ZFS pools or consumer devices like Synology or Netgear NAS appliances.
In sharp contrast to Western Digital's position on SMR disks as NAS, Seagate executive Greg Belloni told us that there weren't any SMR disks in the Ironwolf (competitor to Western Digital Red) line-up now and that the technology is not appropriate for that purpose.
[...] Hattis Law has initiated a class action lawsuit against Western Digital, accordingly. The lawsuit alleges both that the SMR technology in the newer Western Digital Red drives is inappropriate for the marketed purpose of the drives and that Western Digital deliberately "deceived and harm[ed] consumers" in the course of doing so.
Previously: AnandTech Interview With Seagate's CTO: New HDD Technologies Coming
Western Digital: Over Half of Data Center HDDs Will Use SMR by 2023
Seagate Caught Using SMR in Barracuda Compute and Desktop Drives
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:05PM (7 children)
Cretins that speak/write like this should be strangled on the spot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:31PM (1 child)
The above blob of nonsense was written by a marketer.
This is why marketers, and the marketing department, is the devil in disguise.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:40PM
In DISGUISE? I think it might be more accurate to say "In Uniform."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:59PM (1 child)
How many RPMs for the bullet?
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:24AM
There's a similar problem with humans. For example my mother-in-law can talk at least 5,000rpm, possibly 6,000rpm on occasions, even though you'd normally only expect around 150rpm for human speech.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:36PM (2 children)
Sales, marketing, and politicians. Ignore them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:14AM
I think that goes against the imperative to kill.
I miss the old country where no one had patients for bullshit, and cretins like this would get "lost in the woods."
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:12AM
And doubly so for Scotty From Marketing
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:15PM (3 children)
WD is just displaying support for the new and improved progressive math, where progressives rationalized that 2+2=5, by showing us how 7200==5400 can also be true in the progressive alternate universe.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:59PM (1 child)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:16PM
Economies of scale are very real, that doesn't excuse false advertising. There's no US federal product liability law but it's definitely breach of contract - as the wording of the UK sale of goods act says...
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:30AM
Meh, just switch to SSDs, then you know you're getting genuine 5400rpm drives, no cheating there.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:37PM (3 children)
Enjoy your pasteurised prepared cheese products and processed cheese foods too, while you're at it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:41PM (2 children)
But
youlawyers can still sue over it and extract a settlement. Also, the deception goes further:[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:12PM
What a lemon. One of those not too common drives with a negative MTBF.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:14AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:01PM (1 child)
Consumes power like a 7200 but performs like a 5400, did It get that right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:23AM
Sounds like rhinos grazing on your porch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:11PM (3 children)
in my opinion, even SSDs are hard to determine, for a given time and sku, whether a new purchase will result in getting TLC or QLC
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:39PM
Independent reviews should have that info if store pages don't. If there's no review anywhere (does that actually happen?), it's probably a third-party garbage brand. Like Kingston or something.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:41PM (1 child)
Same goes, as discussed before, for SMR vs. CMR https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/ [servethehome.com]
This has some great updated test results and recommends much better drives: https://www.servethehome.com/seagate-ironwolf-pro-18tb-hdd-and-4tb-ironwolf-nas-ssds-arrive/ [servethehome.com]
Computer I'm sitting at right now has a 1TB Hitachi that frequently does a r-r-r-r-r sound. And the performance from a user's standpoint is TERRIBLE. It's noisy enough that you hear it thrashing and doing its r-r-r-r-r thing while the computer is unresponsive. Running Windump of course. Windump doesn't really cache HD, btw. That RAM is used to run MS's spy software.
I wonder what happens to your data and filesystem structure if power gets interrupted during an SMR churn. Can't be good.
Great case for a small SSD for C: and put the 1TB clunker as 2nd data drive, or external.
Point of all of this is: you look up the Hitachi's specs and NOWHERE can you find that it's in fact a SMR drive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @04:52PM
No normal hard drive gives good results if the power is interrupted mid-write. So just don't do that.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:41PM (68 children)
Remember when they reclassified a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes instead of 1048576 bytes?
People still but spinning rust?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:46PM (2 children)
My boot disk is always an NVME SSD, but I still buy some spinning rust. The average motherboard doesn't have that many m.2 or PCIe slots available after you use a slot (sometimes two) for a video card. I really have no interest in spending money on SATA SSDS, since spinning disks can max out SATA3 bandwidth, even if the latency isn't as good as SSD.
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:57AM (1 child)
Show me a mechanical drive that maxes out sata3 I don't think they exist.
As an aside NVME drives run much hotter than sata ssds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @08:10AM
Dual-actuator HDDs could max out SATA3. I don't think they exist yet though.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:53PM (1 child)
That was correct though. Was the storage size supposed to change for a ternary computer or 10 bits to a byte machine?
(Score: 2) by chromas on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:47AM
Yes, please. I would like metric bytes already.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday September 09 2020, @12:04AM (40 children)
You mean when they corrected the de-facto size measurements to use standard SI prefixes instead of having weird computer-specific versions that were almost-but-not-quite the same, when the discrepancy started getting significant?
Yeah, the move was probably prompted by marketers wanting to use bigger numbers - but when you get right down to it using standard SI prefixes for something other than standard SI quantities is really hard to justify.
You're always welcome to use the new Kibi-, Mebi-, Gibi-, Tebi- etc. prefixes if you want to use binary sizes - but unless you're a computer hardware engineer there's really not a whole lot of reason to do so.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @12:34AM
With your powerful witnessing of the faith, surely you shall go to METRIC HEAVEN when the Holy Trinity, err, Holy Decade, sends you the great SIGKILL.
The number, yea, the base of all powers, of the Holy LORD is 10. The number of the Beast is 1024. Honor the Lord and renounce publicly the number of the Beast!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:02AM (30 children)
Nobody was confused by the traditional powers of 1024 used in the context of computer memory or storage.
It was 100% a marketing lie to use powers of 1000 in an attempt to deceive the buyer. Nothing more.
And it's baseless (heh!) to say that the computer units clashed with SI units because it was always KB, MB, GB. Note the byte part of the unit which avoids ambiguity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:18AM (18 children)
It's not "kaybee". It's kilobyte. kilo means one thousand, not one thousand and twenty four.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:25AM
Says the metric fascist. Freedom lovers prefer base 16 or whatever the fuck a farthing was.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:16AM (16 children)
So how much is 1 KB RAM? 1,000 or 1024?
My point is: context. Yes, kilo generally means 1,000. But in computers, long ago it became known to mean 1024, and in fact for years hard disks used 1024, and 1048576 for MB.
You either work for hard disk manufacturer, or own stock.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:56AM (7 children)
> long ago it became known to mean 1024
If the metric system doesn't work for computer scientists, they should make up their own semantics. It is wrong to take a system understood by every scientist and most rational people in the world and then break it.
Nb: I have worked on an experiment where we had to introduce a systematic error on the results because we didn't know whether something was measured in multiples of 1000 or 1024. *Words matter*.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:34AM
I usually do this for all units anyway because it makes me look smart and lets me drop some snark about the shitty substandard work of everyone else.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:05PM (4 children)
Hey, points for steering it political!
So while we're at it, *Context matters*.
BTW, please get someone to take this website down:
https://what-when-how.com/technology-terms/kilo-mega-giga-tera-peta-and-all-that/#:~:text=Kilo,%20mega,%20giga,%20tera,%20and%20peta%20are%20among,used%20in%20electronics%20and%20physics. [what-when-how.com]
And nope, I had and have NOTHING to do with that website, nor the hundreds of others like it.
As an engineer, it's part of my job and who I am to verify specs, including definitions. In England a "gallon" is different from a US gallon. Says so right on my gasoline cans. And there's a "dry gallon" which is different still! Context. It matters.
We seem to live in an age where everything is being re-defined; definitions are being changed, words take on new meanings ("device" means a phone now?) I have friends to whom "device" only means "cell phone". You can't use the word "device" without them fixating on a cell phone. If I say "I invented a device to secure a car jackstand", they think I have a cell phone holding up a car. (And yes, then I say "yes, there's an app for that" and we all laugh.)
Again, why are you defending greedy manufacturers who are YET AGAIN messing with numbers, specs, definitions, just to get over on customers?
Did you miss the recent articles about WD LYING about CMR versus SMR drives?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 09 2020, @03:17PM (3 children)
> *Context matters*
I get it, but they invented the metric system specifically so that things were multiples of 10. And then computer scientists broke it!
Mind if physicists define a new programming language for physics applications and call it C++, that is kinda similar to regular C++ except when it's completely different? Hey, up to you to know the context!
Anyway, random internet rants don't get anyone anywhere, and I am sure as you point out greedy hardware manufacturers don't care about this sort of semantic argument - just that computer scientists are idiots to break the metric system and you shouldn't defend them.
Your argument should be "I get that the CS definitions of metric system are stupid, but the hardware manufacturers don't care; they are just trying to rip people off".
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:48AM (2 children)
Dude, you must think I'm Earth's Emperor. I'm sorry to tell you that I'm so not in charge, and you're wasting your time and words on me. I know what you're saying, and I don't disagree. But I'm trying to say: word meanings, definitions, diction get changed. Ever hear the term "popular misconception"?? People invent and define words and terms and units, and people change them and the definitions and usages. I don't like it either. Causes lots of problems. But hey, it's life and you may be happier, or at least less irritated, if you open your mind to the fact that things change. Trust me- I hate it, but I've learned to let it go; that there are bigger things to deal with in life. I linked a website that defines "k" and "m" and "g" etc. for 2 major contexts.
If you really want to get people to stop using k for 1024, you've got a very very big fight on your hands. You'd have an easier time getting a 3rd-party candidate elected President in Nov.
I'm not so sure that "k" and "m", etc., are necessarily and only part of the metric system.
Thanks for the spirited discussion, btw. :)
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 10 2020, @09:00AM (1 child)
> I'm sorry to tell you that I'm so not in charge
Why not? I mean you must have had decades to organise it all!
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:21PM
Lord knows I've tried! Nobody listens to me. That's why I write here. I know this website is just software running a bunch of AI / bots, but it makes me happy to think there are real people writing ridiculous things and trolling my opinions and rantings.
There's a lot of sarcastic humor in all of that. I have learned that sarcasm doesn't always come through in writing. I'm guilty of not quite getting someone's sarcasm a couple of times. More learning through SN. I have to go interact with different kinds of bots now. :)
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:22PM
And now here's another abbreviation to decode! Let's see...lower case 'b', so it must be 'bits'. The N is upper case though, so it can't mean nanobits (what does that even mean?).
I'm going to go with Nota Bits. From the Latin, or something.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday September 09 2020, @12:02PM (7 children)
Umm. No. Computer word length varied quite a lot (There's a convenient table [wikipedia.org] in the Wikipedia article), but has generally settled on a size that can be stored in a multiple of 8-bits. DRAM, for technical reasons, is most conveniently packaged in units built up of powers of two, but tape, drums, disks and other more esoteric non-volatile storage doesn't have the same technical requirements: so it is actively unhelpful to use an SI unit of magnitude to refer to a quantity that is not a power of 10. When computers needed to communicate, I/O interface data rates were measured in bits/s, then kilobits/s, then megabits/s etc, and a kilobit/s is 1000 bits per second, not 1024 bits per second. The 'fundamental unit' of voice telecommunications circuits depends on most information content of a human voice being carried in frequencies between 300 and roughly 4000 Hz. To be able to reproduce this via pulse-code modulation, a voice call is sampled at 8000 samples per second, each sample being an 8-bit sample. Multiplying up, this gives a 64,000 bit per second data rate, which is why many early data circuits were in multiples of 64 kilobits/s (or 56 kilobots/second in the USA, for technical reasons (robbed-bit signalling)).
The tl;dr summary - only DRAM has good technical reasons for being measured in powers of 2. Non-volatile storage and communications circuits have always used SI units, unless marketing got involved.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:46PM (6 children)
This whole story is about yet another questionable advertising practice in the computer world. I'm NOT the only person who thinks context matters and that "k" in kilotons means 1000, but "k" in the computer world means 1024.
Why do people get so triggered about this? Why are you defending manufacturers who are just trying to get over on customers? What's in it for you? Are you an investor, or lawyer out of work? What is in it for you to defend manufacturers lying about specs?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday September 09 2020, @03:24PM (5 children)
But 'k' in the computer world does not mean 1024.
k (kilo) in the computer world means 1000. It is an SI prefix.
Ki (kibi) in the computer world (and elsewhere) means 1024. It is an ISO/IEC prefix.
and, of course, 'K' means Kelvin.
It is a sad part of the human condition to cling to familiar erroneous beliefs, even when they are demonstrably wrong.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:31PM (4 children)
k always meant 1024 in the computer world. When you say kibi it means your dentist used too much Novocaine or you unwisely crashed a motorcycle without a helmet.
Ki was invented to fill a real need after the drive manufacturers polluted the old terminology with confusion.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:43PM (3 children)
No, no it did not. It might be true for a period of time (not always) in the computer marketing world, but only idiots take a well-defined prefix and pollute it with a different meaning, and then the ignorant pick up on this idiotic usage and run with it because they know no better.
I certainly remember people complaining about disk-drive sizes being written correctly, and certain disk-drive manufacturers had to point out that their usage had never changed, but people's expectations had. It doesn't help that Microsoft Windows measured/measures disk-drive sizes in powers of two, but uses metric prefixes.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:54PM (1 child)
You must be from an alternate timeline where text books, tutorials, and computing dictionaries differed significantly from the ones in this world. If the manufacturers claimed the use had never changed, they were gaslighting and you bought it.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:06PM
Waves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:01PM
I've seen old marketing/tech documents that show 64 KiB of RAM being described as a '65K' unit. So at first, even the chip nerds were using base10. At some point they went to base 2, and then some programmers thought everything revolved around base 2, and decided storage in the file system should be in base 2 as well, even though it had always been base 10, and had no reason to be base 2.
The 512-byte sector thing is a sop to realities of interfacing with the chips and busses, especially in the old days. But it isn't a rule; you don't see anybody claiming Ethernet is pulling a stunt by having a 1500-byte MTU, or a 9000 byte jumbo MTU.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:49AM (7 children)
The byte was the smallest unit of addressable memory (ie: word length) which is hardware dependent, commonly 6 bits until the advent of 7 bit ASCII (add a parity bit for TTY and we have the 8 bits). Where were the "traditional powers of 1024" with 6bit bytes?
A byte wasn't formally standardized as 8bits until ISO/IEC 80000.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:53AM (6 children)
Hey Methuselah, 8 bits were synonymous with byte since the 1970s.
The fact that some self-important "commitee" took it upon themselves decades later to add their seal of approval to this universally used term is really laughable.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @04:43AM (4 children)
get it right 8 bits is a whole for long while..
2 bits is a quarter
4 bits is a half dollar
8 birs is a buck
Goes back to "pieces of 8", when gold coins where cut into 8 bits. Just another old system still in use today.
Talking about old systems.... Know what set the Saturn 5 rocket diameter? A railroad tunnel. Know what set the railroad width? The rails standard. Known what set the rail standard? Cart wheel ruts. Know what set the cart wheel ruts? War Chariots. Know what set war chariots wheel widths? Two people on chariot. Know who set that?? Bureaucrats of the Roman Empire. So a ~2000yr old desidion forcd the maximum diameter of the saturn 5 and Shuttle's external full tanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:35AM
You want that shit compatible, when we are fighting ww4.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @12:56PM
The shuttle's external tanks were transported by barge not railroad.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:49PM
Many (most) very large ships are sized for the Panama Canal.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:33PM
These are two different standards that are only marginally related to each other. Are you suggesting that there are Roman era chariot tunnels that you could drive a train through?
So that's 33 feet for stages 1 and 2. Stage 3 was 21.7 feet.
The loading gauge [wikipedia.org] of railroads in the US are not nearly big enough to accommodate that load. In fact, the first two stages were sent by sea, and the third by air [wikipedia.org]. The shuttle external fuel tank was also sent by sea [nasa.gov].
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:58PM
And your evidence isn't even evidence, as it's false. In the 70s, 6-bit, 9-bit, and 12-bit bytes were still common, in 12-bit, 18-bit, 30-bit, and 36-bit architectural words, and even the not-even-defined-as-any-fixed-number-of-bits bytes of the PDP-10 were still extant.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:03AM (2 children)
Yeah, the “byte part of the unit avoids ambiguity” just like the “troy” or “avoirdupois” clarifies the ounce, or the country tells you how long the “foot” is locally or perhaps whether you need to measure by whether your blacksmith’s guild has a different set of length sizes than the local armorer’s guild.
Because that’s the sort of shit that the metric system was specifically designed to avoid — units attuned to specific materials or specific professions or some local unit rather than a universal meaning.
Yes, some of it was driven by marketers of hard drives initially, but that’s only because SI hasn’t yet started screaming (too much) about it because computers programming was still a niche industry. Metric prefixes mean powers of 10. Period. That’s the fucking point of the metric system. Early computer dudes were adopting inappropriate terminology for convenience in their specific field... which is precisely why all those shitty units existed before the metric system.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @04:36PM (1 child)
"Because that’s the sort of shit that the metric system was specifically designed to avoid — units attuned to specific materials or specific professions or some local unit rather than a universal meaning."
Metric prefixes apply to metric units.
bits and bytes weren't metric units, and have no relationship or correspondence to metric units so the metric prefixes weren't strictly applicable anyway. It was infuriating for SI to try to dictate that computer science change their established terminology; especially since it wanted to replace it with gibberish like mebibyte and kibibyte. And worse they proposed new prefixes ... Mi and Ki etc... that don't mean anything to anyone when applied outside of bytes. Go anywhere and tell a someone you want 1 Kig of butter or a string 3 Mim long, or ask how many GiJ their engine produces. Its nonsense, these new SI "information" prefixes aren't supposed to be used with metric units. Likewise the only people looking to apply metric interpretations to the units were marketing assholes. Nevertheless i do actually sympathize with the value of standard prefixes meaning a single thing so I'm not actually against adapting new terminology.
I have often thought things would have gone a lot smoother for everyone if they'd simply tacked on binary at the front. bMB, bGB; it would have been less disruptive to computer scientists to "add a clarifier" rather than to "change" while giving us an SI sanctioned option to remove the conflict and ambiguity. We'd call them "binary megabytes or b-megabytes when discussing them which would have been less obnoxious. And we'd always use the b prefix in the written form when distinct from decimal representations. It's basically the same solution SI came up with, but less disruptive to how we talk; and wouldn't have left us making infantile noises which is where I personally think the majority of the resistance to the new prefixes comes from. Hell... im even ok with MiB as a written prefix if its pronunciation had been i-Megabytes or something, but I can't abide saying "mebibyte". I'm sure it's largely because i grew up saying megabyte, but i think its also because just mebibyte sounds like I stumbled over my words trying to say megabyte. Maybe the next generation will embrace it more, but it doesn't seem to be.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:23PM
They are not SI prefixes.
kibi, mebi etc are IEC/ISO prefixes [wikipedia.org].
SI uses some metric prefixes, but the SI use is a subset of the total (historical) set of metric prefixes [wikipedia.org], and disallows certain common historic usages. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:53AM (1 child)
Guys no mater what system of measure you decide to use to measure your dicks or your brains ... nobody fucking cares or knows what a kilobite is or isn't. You are the chaff the and the 1 x 10^8 or 2^23 people with freedom bucks are the wheat. Stop crying and figure out how to get some $$$$ or STFU. We all need $$$$ so get some.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:14AM
That's why the topic is brought up over and over again.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:12PM
Of course it was done because marketing wanted bigger numbers. Those weren't just defacto terms, they were well defined in the field of computing. For decades, kilo in computing meant 1024. It never meant anything else when dealing with any system that worked in base 2.
The move by drive manufacturers had about as much popular support as Swatch's "metric time".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:28PM (4 children)
Can someone document when this supposed change in storage measurements took place, showing actual examples?
No? Huh.. Maybe it never happened, and the chip nerds are just butt-hurt that they don't run the world.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:04PM (3 children)
I couldn't swear to when, but the units have actually been confused around storage for a long time. For example: a 1.44"MB" floppy disk stored 1,474,560 bytes. Divide by 1024 and you get 1440"KB", and since there's 1000 K in a M, that became 1.44"MB" - but in that case M = 1,024,000, wrong by either standard. Using SI prefixes, it should have been a 1.47MB disk, while using binary prefixes it should have been a 1.41MB disk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:23AM (2 children)
Floppies are very screwy.
The great 1000 to 1024 switch appears to have been done by Mac Finder 1.0, when it displayed 'K', it counted by 1024.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:03PM (1 child)
That's entirely possible: Windows has/had the same flaw, and plausibly got it by 'borrowing' the concept fromthe Mac GUI.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday September 12 2020, @01:11AM
I believe Linux traditionally did the same thing.
I'm not sure is there was any borrowing by anyone though - back then a programmer of any quality (particularly system programmers) had to be constantly vigilant about the performance impacts of memory structure sizes and alignments, and since memory was all built around base-2 sizes, those are the sizes programmers were accustomed to thinking in.
Really, the performance impact of misaligned data structures isn't any less today, but modern hardware is mostly so immensely overpowered for what most people use it for that programmers can mostly afford to ignore such issues.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:22AM (15 children)
You won't get powers of 2 from "100 heads" and "250 cylinders", and that comes from the 50s and 60s.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:20PM (12 children)
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(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:50PM (11 children)
Now do your research. Notice the numbers 25, 50, 100, 250 cropping up, right from the very start?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:08PM (10 children)
Disk sides were originally calculated in terms of 1024 byte multiples (2 sectors of 512 bytes).
The actual storage of a 360k floppy was 40 tracks x 9 sectors of 412 bytes, x 2 sides, which is 368,640 bytes. We never called the 368k floppies. Same thing with the old hard disks. Mibibytes was marketing bullshit that ignored existing practices to make people believe they were getting more space than they actually got. And this ignores the intro-sector data, which if you wanted to use custom controllers you could store data there as well but don't try to read it on another machine.
I had a special board that replaced the stock floppy controller to allow me to make 42-track 82 track disks, vary the number of sectors, Skip formatting some tracks (handy with unformatted disks if you wanted to copy disks that used the presence of an unformattwd track as copy protection), Skip formatting individual sectors, creating "weak" sectors that couldn't be copied by regular controllers, map out unreadable sectors and skip them, etc.
In summary, 1k meant 1024 bytes whether it was ram or disk. I'm a bit surprised you didn't have this committed to memory.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:08PM (2 children)
Yeah, I think K has pretty much always meant 1024 in computer storage, M started getting weird right from the beginning though - a 1.44MB disk stored 1,474,560 bytes, or 1.44*1024*1000.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:20PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:17AM
Exactly: 1024 bytes in a KB, but 1000 KB in a MB. That's wrong no matter which standard you use. It should have been either 1.47MB (SI prefixes) or 1.41MB (binary prefixes)
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:25PM (4 children)
If you think disk storage started with floppies, it didn't.
The IBM 305 stored 5 million 6-bit words*. Launched in 1956.
From "IBM Customer Engineering Manual of Instruction RAMAC 305" [ed-thelen.org]
So, 50 disks, 100 usable tracks per disk, ten 100 character records per track (character was 6 bits + 1 parity + 1 space) - so 50 x 100 x 10 x 100 = 5,000,000 characters. Note no use of kilobytes or megabytes. As the characters are stored in 6 bits, thats 30,000,000 bits. Assuming 8-bit bytes, in modern terms, that's 3,75 megabytes, or 3.576 mebibytes.
*Actually 8 bits if you include the overhead, which was 1 bit of parity, and 1 bit spacer.
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:48PM (1 child)
These were not mass produced storage devices.
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(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:20PM
You really need to examine your own reasoning here and evaluate if it meets the high standards you set for yourself.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:25PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:17PM
What you said was:
As I demonstrated, disk sizes were not originally calculated in terms of 1024 byte multiples. I even linked to the manual of one of the first commercially available disk storage devices.
And the way you structured your writing gives a very strong implication that floppies are 'original'. Which they are not.
So now you are trying to move the goalposts by saying disk storage standardized around 512-byte sectors. I do not disagree, but the sector size says almost nothing about how the total capacity of a disk storage devices is expressed.
So, one of the earliest disk-based storage devices was describes as having a total capacity of 5 million characters. It was not expressed as a number of 1024-unit collections of characters. Hence disks have not 'always' had capacities expressed in 1024-byte 'kilobytes' or 1048576-byte 'megabytes'. You need to provide evidence for when this became common practice (if ever), and show that hard-drive manufacturer's practices change from that at some point.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday September 10 2020, @08:22AM (1 child)
Quite why you fly forwards over a decade to floppies I don't know, maybe you think they'll support your absurd point of view. Alas they don't.
Let's look at a Memorex 650 floppy disk, the first commercially available writable floppy disk. And the actual Memorex manual from 1972 as the primary source for the data:
"""
DATA RETRIEVAL TIMES
Rotational Speed 375rpm
Track to Track Access Time 20ms
Data Transfer Rate 200 kilobits/sec.
DISC CHARACTERISTICS
Number of Tracks 50
Recording Density 2400 bits per inch (inside track)
Record Length Sectorized
(8 per track) 3.5 kilobits
Record Length Indexed
(1 per track) 30 kilobits
Disc Capacity Sectorized 1.4 megabits
Disc Capacity Indexed 1.5 megabits
DATA RECORDING FORMAT
Recording Mode Frequency modulation
Sectors per Track 8
Index per Track 1
"""
Powers of 10 used for the "mega" and "kilo" *everywhere*. Please stop the lies, they make you look like an utter loon.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:10PM
It's as if you didn't read an earlier post on this topic.
Your source quotes capacities in Mbits/s and kbits/s.
There was never any dispute about MB (megabytes, always abbreviated with a capital M and B) and KB (kilobytes, always abbreviated with a capital K and B, and in the early days, simply K).
This disparity comes from telecom electrical engineers using power of 10 units and counting bits, and from software engineers using base 2 (1024 is 2^10) and counting bytes.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:19AM (1 child)
As storage goes, it's pretty much just the hard disk manufacturers that do this, with the SSD manufacturers following suit. Even today, when it comes to things like RAM, Flash, EEPROM, etc. kilo = 1024, mega = 1024*1024, etc.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 10 2020, @08:04AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:51PM (3 children)
I remember it. I also remember the outrage that surrounded it.
I remember when KBytes was 1024. Megabytes was 1024^2.
It was cloudier by the time we got to Gigabytes. Marketing had already corrupted the meaning, as they love to do.
I also remember 40 MB drives, that were 40 * 1024 * 1024 bytes. It is also interesting that some drives were in 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 MB.
I still have "the guts" (not the outer case) of an ancient Apple Profile 5 MB drive. This was from a Lisa. But that drive was also used on Apple /// and probably also Apple II. That drive was huge in physical size. Even the internal drive mechanism is huge. But only 5 MB. It sounded like a jet engine taking off. It was so noisy until it spun up to speed -- even then it was noisy. And it took a good 30 seconds before it was ready to use after turning on.
Young children today aren't going to remember such things.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:15PM (2 children)
So how many bytes did that %MB beast actually hold? A 1.44MB floppy disk was from around the same period, and that held 1,474,560 bytes = 1.44 1024*1000 bytes, and should have rightly been called either 1.41MB or 1.47MB
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:49PM
1.44 MB floppies didn't arrive until years after the large, loud 5 MB Profile drive. Don't put them at the same time. They simply were not.
In early 1984, the Macintosh came out. This was about the end of the Profile drive I describe. At this time, the Mac was the first and ONLY computer that used 3-1/2 inch floppy hard shell disks with a spring loaded shutter. PCs still used 5-1/4 inch soft shell disks you could staple to a piece of paper. The Mac hard shell floppies held, IIRC, approximately 400 KB. Later it was doubled to 800 KB. Somewhere in there, some PCs started using the smaller hard shell floppies. This is when capacity got to be 1.44 MB (however they then measured it). I remember it was 1987 when the Mac II came out, and the PS/2 appeared. I wasn't into PC's so I can't be sure, but I seem to think this was about when PC's started getting the hard shell floppies.
I no longer remember the exact spec of the Profile drives as far as actual byte level capacity.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:51PM
I would also point out the Profile drive was considered small (capacity) at the time. My employer, customers, others in the industry were regularly using 10, 20 and sometimes 40 MB drives in 1984.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
I assume you meant "buy".
If your work is important to you then your backups should be to two different technologies, e.g. any flash (SD card, external SSD, flash USB key) and an external spinning rust disk. This guards against unanticipated life shortening faults affecting all of one technology type.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:33PM
Obviously no porn or videos, though I might transfer the several terabyte of dvds when a 4tb USB stick gets really cheap.
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(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:07AM (2 children)
I would assume that anything that doesn't meet the 7200 RPM threshold goes into the 5400 RPM bin to get sold. And I'm also sure that these drives are within the power and noise limits stated in the product specs for the 5400 RPM units. Either that or Western Digital's legal team sucks. Everything else is marketing...
That is all.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:23AM
WRONG. It is sold as 5400 RPM but is still running at 7200 RPM:
The spec sheet does show higher power consumption numbers, so they didn't lie about that part.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday September 09 2020, @05:53PM
Yesterday we squabble over SMR being used in RAID drives.
Today we squabble over 7200 or 5400 RPM.
Tomorrow we squabble that an SSD labeled drive has slight spinning noise and vibration.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:08AM (5 children)
Who cares about drive RPM? If its spinning rust, it's slow as ass, but big.
If you care about performance, you'll put an SSD in front.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:53AM
Heat, noise and power consumption in a NAS or media center application for one thing...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:36AM (1 child)
"care about performance" .... Two things, performance is _not_ a one dimensional aspect, and .. that's what she said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:39AM
Yep gotta be wide too.
(Score: 2) by EJ on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:03AM (1 child)
If you are ignorant, do not show off your ignorance like it's a badge of honor.
There is this thing called physics that actually matters. There can be issues with different drive speeds creating harmonic interference, etc. Vibration is a thing.
SSDs are not the ultimate best thing of evar[sic] that you would like to pretend they are.
If you had two brain cells to rub together, you would have noticed that this article is NOT ABOUT PERFORMANCE. These people want LOWER PERFORMANCE drives so they spin SLOWER. Try to comprehend what you are reading before commenting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:41AM
Yeah but the drives is SLOWAR not FASTAR.