I have spent the last few days trying to figure out how to do this. Windows displays storage volumes in Gibibytes rather than Gigabytes. Same for MB and TB. 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte 1024 Mebibytes = 1 Gibibytes This makes the hard drives appear smaller than they really are. For example a 2 terrabyte hard drive in windows 8 appears to be 1.81TB. But its actually 1.81 Tebibytes. I was wondering if there was a way to make windows display storage volumes in Mega, Giga, and Terabytes rather than MiB, GiB, and TiB like in OSX and Linux. From what I have read Windows displays storage in Binary Prefix rather than Decimal Prefix. I can hardly find any info about this online. Any help would be appreciated.
This is just my opinion and in no way would I try to keep you from doing what you're wanting to do in this case, if it's even possible, but for practical purposes it's the hard drive manufacturers faults. You probably already know this and if so I apologize. Many, many years ago they decided to stick to the metric (technically correct) definitions of kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc and have stuck with it ever since. The result was my paying $650 for an 40MB Apple IIGS hard drive in 1988, and me wondering why it says it's only 39MB. I'll assume you do know the logic of the rest of the computer's components and software using the powers of 2, specifically 2^10 = 1024. I guess all I'm saying is that my angst in this case will always remain with the hard drive manufacturers and I lay the responsibility at their feet to unconfuse this issue and make their method of measurement consistent with the rest of the computer world. FYI don't SSDs use the powers of 2 size since they're basically RAM? Correct me if I'm wrong as I haven't bought an SSD yet, but if so this problem eventually will take care of itself as the technology keeps improving and hard drives go the way of the dildo, I mean Dodo. Sorry, I'm also tired, unable to get back to sleep, have to get up in a couple of hours (uh, correction: now) and I'm slap-happy.
Apple is the only one showing it that way and its stupid, you cannot measure binary data correctly with 1000 multiples. Like you said, it only make them "Appear smaller", but, its just that, on the other hand, files will "appear" bigger that way, one that is 1.8 MiB will look as a 2MB file in there.
I just find it strange that windows and android are the only operating systems I have used that display data in binary prefix. All the different distributions of linux I have used and my virtual hackintosh show data in decimal form. I wish that windows would use the proper abbreviations GiB and TiB rather than GB and TB to clear up confusion.
But, they started doing that just after Snow Leopard and Linux just after that, and its just about 1-2 years, its a hipster thing. I feel more weird having using 15+ years the 1024 multiples than, just because they feel it, start using another format.
Actually binary calculation is the proper form and the only correct one. And it happens in Linux as well. Because data are always in binary and since the beginning of computing 8Bits=1Byte and 1KB = 1024B. The Metric system is not and never was used in anything computer/electronic based. As it was mentioned above, the metric translation of 1KB= 1000B, which is entirely incorrect, started as a marketing scheme by storage media companies as the average buyer had no idea on the subject and the "bigger number is better" mentality sells. Something like this is going on right now on the digital camera market as well (Megapixel marketing..people buy cameras with crappy lenses, crappy sensors and crappy features but with an insane amount of MP, which are useless to 99% of them, just to substitute their previous camera who may actualy be of better quality both in IQ and production.). The terms GiB, TiB, etc are quite recent and were coined up by the same storage media companies when various groups (programmers etc) started complaining about the incorrect use of MB,GB, etc. You will notice that EVERYWHERE else in any operating system or hardware the terms MB,GB, etc are always standing for 1024 of their subunit. Your 16GB ram is actually 16384MB, a 16MB file is actually 16384KB, etc etc. Nowhere, but nowhere at all are the terms MiB, GiB, etc used because they are simply bogus. In Linux only in the GUI (Nautilus etc) you can see metric values for the drives but those are not actual values used for anything. Linux just displays the drives by how they are named. When it comes to calculating actual sizes and capacities Linux also uses the proper form because that is the only one that is actually usable in a computer. Try to check your drives capacity in Linux and although it says 750GB you'll see that it's actually 698 and 750 is just the drive's name. To answer your question though, it is impossible on a standard Windows OS to display the drive capacities by any other way. I guess it could be possible with some sort of shell replacement (eg Emerge Desktop) after tweaking it's configuration files or source.
Easy to become shocked of this before it's explained, happened myself once when the question showed up. Thought my hardware was broken but fortunately my assumption was wrong. So unnecessary, this could be more described for new users so people doesn't have to worry so much. In the other hand, having hard to believe any of the companies will support this help. One of the tricks that assisting them with bucks. Why would they
My RAM is Kingston DDR3 at 1600 MHz, and the manufacturer has labeled it "PC3-12800", saying that it offers 12800 MB/s. Could you please tell me if those 12800 MB/s are binary or decimal? Also, could you please tell me if the 5 Gbit/s transfer rate of USB 3.0 is binary or decimal??? Thanks!!
interesting thread... and i also need the ans ... but i think that it is binary.. because computers always encode the external commands into binary language of 0 and 1.