linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] scsi/sd: Fix size output in MB

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Date:	Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:27:43 -0400
From:	James Smart <James.Smart@...lex.Com>
To:	Matthew Wilcox <matthew@....cx>
CC:	Simon Arlott <simon@...e.lp0.eu>,
	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-scsi <linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] scsi/sd: Fix size output in MB

Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> Reasonable minds can certainly disagree on this one.  I respectfully
> submit that reporting a 97415MB capacity is less useful than reporting a
> 97GB capacity.  If you look at drive advertisements, they sell 1TB,
> 1.5TB, 80GB, 750GB, 360GB, ... we should be trying to match that.  I'm a
> little dubious about trying to match the 1.5TB; I think 1500GB is close
> enough, but a 50GB drive shouldn't be reported as 50000MB.  IMO, anyway.

Since when did techies start paying attention to marketing statements ?

We should be doing what's natural and *consistent*, which is typically 
dealing with power-of-2. Saying it's one thing at one level, and when 
the natural use (how many 512 byte sectors get added up later) changes 
that number in a different level, you've created even more confusion. 
There's no consistency.

As far as user concern - they've seen this discrepancy in the PC/Windows 
world for years now...  Why should we be taking on the task to solve or 
answer it now ?  Throw in different overheads for filesystem metadata 
loss, volume manager metadata, raid level loss, etc - you'll never be 
able to explain it all to the user.  And personally, I'd rather have 
natural numbers so that if I do understand the uses, I can do 
calculations without doing number-base conversions.

-- james s

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