iirc some early hdd did use binary units for specifications (a kilobyte was 1024 bytes). marketing and greed got manufacturers to switch to the ‘larger sounding’ decimal-based units but they were called the same thing (where a kilobyte was 1000 bytes). bigger numbers sell better or some bullshit.
there’s been lawsuits over it, which is why the retail boxes and manufacturer web sites have the disclaimer about them using decimal-based units. other lawsuits resulted in the verbiage about ‘formatted capacity’ or ‘usable space’ being less probably also being present.
the distinctly different binary units themselves (such as ‘mebibyte’) were introduced and standardized by IEC ~ 1998.
iirc some early hdd did use binary units for specifications (a kilobyte was 1024 bytes). marketing and greed got manufacturers to switch to the ‘larger sounding’ decimal-based units but they were called the same thing (where a kilobyte was 1000 bytes). bigger numbers sell better or some bullshit.
there’s been lawsuits over it, which is why the retail boxes and manufacturer web sites have the disclaimer about them using decimal-based units. other lawsuits resulted in the verbiage about ‘formatted capacity’ or ‘usable space’ being less probably also being present.
the distinctly different binary units themselves (such as ‘mebibyte’) were introduced and standardized by IEC ~ 1998.