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You are entirely correct, and the person you are responding to is wrong. But the author does themselves no favour by including this incorrect tidbit in the article:

> [...] Operating Systems define 1 GB as 1,073,741,824 BYTES.

Mac OS, iOS, Ubuntu, and Debian operating systems at the very least all use base 10 for representing disk and storage space.



Windows uses GB (gigabytes) to mean GiB (gibibytes), MB (megabytes) to mean MiB (mebibytes), and so on because basically noone in the real world adopted IEC's renaming scheme.

Linux (to include Android) and the BSDs (to include MacOS, and iOS?) use GB (gigabytes) to mean decimal GB (gigabytes), a conversion factor basically noone in the real world adopted because multiples of 1000 are meaningless.

So the vast majority of people and Windows to this day understand a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, a megabyte as 1024 kilobytes, and so on. Meanwhile, Linux and the BSDs and drive manufacturers/vendors understand a kilobyte as 1000 bytes, a megabyte as 1000 kilobytes, and so on because it's pedantically correct (and the conversion factors are commercially convenient).

This dissonance in understanding leads to endless "why is my drive smaller than what's printed on the box?" complaints.


The author is simply quoting that text from SanDisk's documentation (they linked to https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/35080)


> But the author does themselves no favour by including this incorrect tidbit in the article:

As I undertood it, that tidbit comes from Sandisk and probably targets Windows user. I also believe Windows does (or did) use base 2 for file and disk sizes


It's clearly marked as a quote.




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