Re: Window is stealing my HD size

"Gerhard Fiedler" <gefiedler@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:449089a9$0$32440$c3e8da3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bob Willard wrote:

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 minimum unit -the sector size- is.

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.

As far as a memory slot goes.
Then it becomes linear, just as with diskdrive sectors, platters etc.

And even in a memory chip there doesn't necessarily be a full complement of
smaller units (eg the MoSys memory chips came in odd sizes using a technique
called Multibank DRAM) or some units are set aside as spares -similar to
disk drives- leaving less than a full complement of units for actual storage.


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 :)

It does actually. Using exactly 2048 512-byte sectors.


Gerhard
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Window is stealing my HD size
    ... powers-of-two sizes that were near-universal for RAM. ... or some units are set aside as spares -similar to disk drives- ... leaving less than a full complement of units for actual storage. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: physical storage on disk
    ... storage on disk NOT in RAM? ... I'm not sure what you want to do exactly, but by using a memory mapped file ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.language)
  • Re: physical storage on disk
    ... storage on disk NOT in RAM? ... I think you are referring to memory mapped files. ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.mfc)
  • Re: Filesystem, RAID Question
    ... data *on the card* will be attempt to be flushed to disk... ... accurately: /persistent/) storage. ... Data in OS-level caches will be lost, ... take about 1000x longer than access to main RAM, ...
    (freebsd-questions)
  • RE: COBOL Program exhausting below the line storage
    ... Lots of ways to skin a cat - If the files are all different sizes then I ... Someone mentioned striping using more storage, ... > send email to listserv@xxxxxxxxxxx with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO ... > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ...
    (bit.listserv.ibm-main)
Loading