Window is stealing my HD size

[Rod Speed]

Your BIOS doesn't support disks over 128GB (137000000000 bytes).

Yes it does.

 

[J. Clarke]

Actually, you are not. At least not if you are a business. The
lagally required unit for storage space is the byte or the bit,

Again, according to what law? The US Code does not contain the word "byte"
and the word "bit" appears only two times in the context of electronic data
processing, storage, transmission, retrieval, or other related matters,
once referring to a "bit tax" and the second time in stating the
requirements for something called a "telecommunications modernization
plan".

everything else will get you fined.

By who?

It is also quite clear that
for goods that have a size, weight, volume or whatever as primary
characteristic, that you need to state this in SI on the goods
or their packaging.

The specific wording refers to the _package_ and specifies "net quantity of
contents". The contents of a package containing a hard disk would in
English units be "1 hard disk". Is there an SI equivalent of "hard disk"?

Since it only applies to businesses, most
people are ignorant about this.

You can direct your questions for your countrie's exact
lagal base here:

http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/mpo_home.htm

Why not search the US Code?

 

[J. Clarke]

Quite frankly, I believe that the US is overimagineing its importance
here. Disks are market in SI units, because the international market
demands it. They could not be sold in most of Europe and Asia
otherwise.

Disks are marketed in "SI units" because somebody at IBM decided to call the
units of data by those names.

Other example: Have you ever noticed that new drive types
(3.5" floppies, CDROM) usually need M3 (metric, 3mm) screws?
The reason is that these were done for international
compatibility from the beginning.

Which has exactly what to do with data storage?

 

[J. Clarke]

Well, you can dig in your laws yourself. Here it is the "Bundesgesetz
vom 9. Juni 1977 ueber das Messwesen".

I know that this is going to come as a shock to you, but that law has no
authority within the borders of the United States.

Your choice. But looking at some of US (I assume) laws, I would
advise you to cry.

"You would assume"? The US Code is online, if you are in doubt you should
check instead of assuming.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Quite frankly, I believe that the US is overimagineing its importance
here. Disks are market in SI units, because the international market
demands it. They could not be sold in most of Europe and Asia otherwise.

Other example: Have you ever noticed that new drive types
(3.5" floppies, CDROM) usually need M3 (metric, 3mm) screws?

The reason is that these were done for international
compatibility from the beginning.

Another stupid attempt at a troll from our babblehead.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Your BIOS doesn't support disks over 128GB (137000000000 bytes).

Nonsense. Of course it does support disks over 137GB , just not the
part that's over 137GB.

[engrish snipped]

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Well, you can dig in your laws yourself. Here it is the "Bundesgesetz
vom 9. Juni 1977 ueber das Messwesen".

Your choice. But looking at some of US (I assume) laws, I would
advise you to cry.

Arnie the advisor. Wonderful 'advice' Arnie always has.

 

[Arno Wagner]

You were just plain wrong on that.

Irrelevant to the unit used when stating the size.

You can claim that all you like. It does not make it true.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner wrote:

Again, according to what law? The US Code does not contain the word "byte"
and the word "bit" appears only two times in the context of electronic data
processing, storage, transmission, retrieval, or other related matters,
once referring to a "bit tax" and the second time in stating the
requirements for something called a "telecommunications modernization
plan".

By who?

The specific wording refers to the _package_ and specifies "net quantity of
contents". The contents of a package containing a hard disk would in
English units be "1 hard disk". Is there an SI equivalent of "hard disk"?

Hard disks have a primary defining size, their capacity. You would
not get away with putting "a quantity of milk" on a container or
"a block of vanilla ice", because they both have a primary
size measure as well.

Why not search the US Code?

Because I could not care less and US law is not what gouverns
international trade and treaties?

However it tuns out that there is a "Unifrom Weights and Measures Law"
in the US. Wou want to look especially at "Special Police Powers" and
"Civil Penalties". As far as I understand the US legal system, you
also will have to reseaerch court decisions and intividual state
adoption to really find out what this law means. Also a lot of it
refers to NIST handbooks, which do not seem to be online. However
there is only two allowed choices for units: SI and the Imperial (?)
units customary in the US, both in the form as published by NIST only.
If you use anything else, you become subject to the "Civil
Penalties".

Arno

 

[dew]

You can claim that all you like. It does not make it true.

You're the one making the claim.

 

[dew]

Disks are marketed in "SI units" because somebody at IBM decided to
call the units of data by those names.

Nope, IBM didn't drive it, and initially hard drive capacity was stated
using the same binary units as were used with memory with the PC.

 

[J. Clarke]

Hard disks have a primary defining size, their capacity. You would
not get away with putting "a quantity of milk" on a container or
"a block of vanilla ice", because they both have a primary
size measure as well.

Not analogous, milk and ice cream are bulk commodities that can be packaged
in any quantity. You cannot have half a hard disk.

Because I could not care less and US law is not what gouverns
international trade and treaties?

Then why do you keep insisting that there is some law or other when you
really have not the slightest idea whether it exists?

However it tuns out that there is a "Unifrom Weights and Measures Law"

The US Code does not contain the phrase "uniform weights and measures"

in the US. Wou want to look especially at "Special Police Powers" and
"Civil Penalties".

Nor does it contain the phrase "special police powers". There are 419 hits
on "civil penalties", none of which appear in the same section with
"weights" or "measures" or "metric" or "SI".

As far as I understand the US legal system, you
also will have to reseaerch court decisions and intividual state
adoption to really find out what this law means.

First you have to demonstrate that there is a law, which you still have not
done.

Also a lot of it
refers to NIST handbooks, which do not seem to be online.

NIST handbooks are not "a law".

However
there is only two allowed choices for units: SI and the Imperial (?)
units customary in the US, both in the form as published by NIST only.

Sez who?

If you use anything else, you become subject to the "Civil
Penalties".

According to what law?

Hint, it will have an identifier of the form "N USC N" where each "N" is an
integer, for example "15 USC 125".

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner wrote:

Not analogous, milk and ice cream are bulk commodities that can be packaged
in any quantity. You cannot have half a hard disk.

Then why do you keep insisting that there is some law or other when you
really have not the slightest idea whether it exists?

The US Code does not contain the phrase "uniform weights and measures"

You did not look in the right place. These are state laws, adopted by
most or all states by now.

Arno

 

[J. Clarke]

You did not look in the right place. These are state laws, adopted by
most or all states by now.

Then provide a link to one.

 

[J. Clarke]

Nope, IBM didn't drive it, and initially hard drive capacity was stated
using the same binary units as were used with memory with the PC.

Huh? When did IBM not call the capacity of a million-byte disk a
"megabyte"?

 

[dew]

Huh? When did IBM not call the capacity of a million-byte disk a
"megabyte"?

The original PC hard drive, the ST506, used binary not decimal MBs.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/mfm/st506.html

So did quite a few drives after that too.

 

[Bob Willard]

dew wrote:

Nope, IBM didn't drive it, and initially hard drive capacity was stated
using the same binary units as were used with memory with the PC.

Initially, HD capacity was stated in characters; and, the choice of SI or
M$ for defining KB/MB/GB/etc. did not matter, since IBM spec'd HD sizes
in exact (or maximum) number of characters. For ref, see the IBM Journal
of R&D, Vol.1, No.1, of 1957. The IBM 350 (the first, AFAIK, commercially
offered HD) held 5,000,000 characters: 500 chars/track, 100 tracks/surface,
2 surfaces/platter, and 50 platters on the one shaft.

And, the latter (by a decade or so) IBM 1301 supported two character sizes,
6-bit and 8-bit; IBM did not, even then, refer to those storage entities
as bytes -- or to HD capacities in MBs or GBs. (The IBM 1301 held up to
2840 6-bit or up to 2205 8-bit characters on each of its 10,000 data tracks.)

IIRC, the major scam in HD sizing for many years was that HD vendors delivered
HDs unformatted, and quoted HD capacity in unformatted bytes -- knowing full
well that the required act of formatting took a big bite. The formatted
v. unformatted capacity difference was far more significant than the
relatively trivial SI v. M$ definition of a GB.

Personally, I do not recall HD vendors ever sticking to the powers-of-two
sizes that were near-universal for RAM. My first home HD was a 20 MB unit,
latter upgraded to a whopping 30MB; seemed adequate, since that computer
did not run anything from M$.

 

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Personally, I do not recall HD vendors ever sticking to the powers-of-two
sizes that were near-universal for RAM.

Which makes sense. The raw storage units on a HD are sequential by nature,
and there's nothing particularly binary about them. The raw storage units
of RAM, however, are accessed through a defined set of binary address
lines, usually located in component cases where size and pin count is
important and minimized, and therefore (so far) the usual sizes are binary
potencies.

It's quite possible that RAM storage goes the same way disk storage has
gone and becomes simply a quantity, not necessarily a binary one,
disconnected from specific case requirements -- and at that point, the more
common decimal potency multipliers may start being used.

Which wouldn't be a bad thing... it's about time that 1 MB of data in RAM
fits in 1 MB of storage space on disk

Gerhard

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner wrote:

Then provide a link to one.

Since using google seems to be too much effort for you, here is one:

http://www.plantboard.org/weights measures law.htm

Seems to be from Arkansas.

You might also want to look here:

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/ncwm-uniform-laws.html

Where you can also find the "Uniform Packaging and Labeling Regulation"
and a document giving the adoption status of it and the the Uniform
Weights and Measures Law (5th link from the top). If I read this
correctly, every state besides Rhode Island has adopted the Weight
and Measurement law, however Rhode Island uses it as guideline.

Here is something else, which provides a neat summary
of why being metric has advantages:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode15/usc_sec_15_00000205---a000-.html

Personally I think that should be more than enough. You may
continue this discussion without my participation from here
onwards. You obviously have no interest in the truth, merely in
maintaining your own misconceptions. Otherwise you could have
easily found all the above by yourself.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

dew wrote:

Initially, HD capacity was stated in characters; and, the choice of
SI or M$ for defining KB/MB/GB/etc. did not matter, since IBM spec'd
HD sizes in exact (or maximum) number of characters. For ref, see
the IBM Journal of R&D, Vol.1, No.1, of 1957. The IBM 350 (the
first, AFAIK, commercially offered HD) held 5,000,000 characters:
500 chars/track, 100 tracks/surface, 2 surfaces/platter, and 50
platters on the one shaft.

And, the latter (by a decade or so) IBM 1301 supported two character
sizes, 6-bit and 8-bit; IBM did not, even then, refer to those
storage entities as bytes -- or to HD capacities in MBs or GBs.
(The IBM 1301 held up to 2840 6-bit or up to 2205 8-bit characters
on each of its 10,000 data tracks.)

Interesting. That was before my time.

IIRC, the major scam in HD sizing for many years was that HD vendors
delivered HDs unformatted, and quoted HD capacity in unformatted
bytes -- knowing full well that the required act of formatting took
a big bite. The formatted v. unformatted capacity difference was
far more significant than the relatively trivial SI v. M$ definition
of a GB.

Incidentially, bit and byte are not SI units. Not too surprising,
since they do not need any physical basis. They can simply be
counted. Only the prefixes are SI. For binary prefixes and definition
of bit and byte, I find only IEEE and ICE standards. IEEE and IEC have
'B' for byte, but IEEE uses 'b' for bit while IEC uses 'bit'.

Personally, I do not recall HD vendors ever sticking to the powers-of-two
sizes that were near-universal for RAM.

For RAM ist is necessary in otder to utilize address lines efficiently.
For HDDs there is no need at all.

Arno