Confused on what is a "proper" GB in term of diskspace and bandwidth.

[Harv45]

Hi, I am confused on what is considered a "proper" GB of bandwidth and diskspace.

Here what I means..
1,000MB=1GB
or
1,024MB=1GB

as some places says the first while others says the second.

 

[plusplus]

The exact one is 1,024Mb

 

[Artashes]

The exact one is 1,024Mb

That is correct.

Harv45, many companies choose to round the numbers of space/bandwidth specifications, but that's only done for presentation purposes.

 

[Harv45]

The exact one is 1,024Mb

Thanks you for the information, the provider I am at said that they treat a GB as 1,000MB and not 1,024MB as I thought I should be getting pr GB. With that said should I just get a refund for them not telling me at purchase? Since the package only said..
5GB Diskspace
50GB Bandwidth

And I am not getting those specs that I paid for (since they told me AFTER purchase that a GB is 1,000MB is how they treat it).

 

[Collabora]

Hi, I am confused on what is considered a "proper" GB of bandwidth and diskspace.

Here what I means..
1,000MB=1GB
or
1,024MB=1GB

And you have every reason to be confused. The answer is actually more complicated than the ones given so far. Let's take a closer look.

The usual (base 10) meaning of the prefix giga- is one billion, so one would expect the term gigabyte to refer to one billion bytes. However, when we talk about digital information we are in the binary world of base 2. The power of 2 which comes closest to 1 billion is 30. In other words

1GB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes

There is a different notation for the binary version. For a binary GB we use GiB (GiB = gibi = giga binary), and so

1 KB = 1,000 bytes
1 KiB (kibi) = 2^10 bytes = 1024 bytes

1 MB = 1,000 KB = 1,000,000 bytes
1 MiB (mebi) = 2^20 bytes = 1024 KiBs = 1,048,576 bytes

1 GB = 1,000 MB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB (gibi) = 2^30 bytes = 1024 MiBs = 1,073,741,824 bytes

1 TB = 1,000 GB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
1 TiB (tebi) = 2^40 bytes = 1024 GiBs = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

In general, the binary version is used for memory and data transmission and the base 10 version for hard drives and storage (sometimes!). Some OSes (Windows) will use the binary value when reporting disk space and file sizes and other OSes the decimal value. In any case if you see a HD advertised as 500 GB, its not crazy to ask yourself: do they mean GB or GiB?
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[Harv45]

And you have every reason to be confused. The answer is actually more complicated than the ones given so far. Let's take a closer look.

The usual (base 10) meaning of the prefix giga- is one billion, so one would expect the term gigabyte to refer to one billion bytes. However, when we talk about digital information we are in the binary world of base 2. The power of 2 which comes closest to 1 billion is 30. In other words

1GB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes

There is a different notation for the binary version. For a binary GB we use GiB (GiB = gibi = giga binary), and so

1 KB = 1,000 bytes
1 KiB (kibi) = 2^10 bytes = 1024 bytes

1 MB = 1,000 KB = 1,000,000 bytes
1 MiB (mebi) = 2^20 bytes = 1024 KiBs = 1,048,576 bytes

1 GB = 1,000 MB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB (gibi) = 2^30 bytes = 1024 MiBs = 1,073,741,824 bytes

1 TB = 1,000 GB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
1 TiB (tebi) = 2^40 bytes = 1024 GiBs = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

In general, the binary version is used for memory and data transmission and the base 10 version for hard drives and storage (sometimes!). Some OSes (Windows) will use the binary value when reporting disk space and file sizes and other OSes the decimal value. In any case if you see a HD advertised as 500 GB, its not crazy to ask yourself: do they mean GB or GiB?
.
.
.
.

Thanks you for the information, please correct me if I am wrong on how I am looking at this

so we have..
GB meaning 1,000MB
and then
GiB meaning 1,024MiB?

Is why my provider are not in the wrong for adverting the specs advertised? As "GB" technically does means 1,000MB?

 

[Artashes]

Thanks you for the information, the provider I am at said that they treat a GB as 1,000MB and not 1,024MB as I thought I should be getting pr GB. With that said should I just get a refund for them not telling me at purchase? Since the package only said..
5GB Diskspace
50GB Bandwidth

And I am not getting those specs that I paid for (since they told me AFTER purchase that a GB is 1,000MB is how they treat it).

Are you using the full 5 GB diskspace and full 50 GB bandwidth they provide?
Are you mistreated by your provider in terms of level of customer support?

Why would you ask for a refund because of mere 24*5= 120 MB of space that you are supposedly not getting, when the provider didn't even promise that space in the package?

 

[Harv45]

Are you using the full 5 GB diskspace and full 50 GB bandwidth they provide?
Are you mistreated by your provider in terms of level of customer support?

Why would you ask for a refund because of mere 24*5= 120 MB of space that you are supposedly not getting, when the provider didn't even promise that space in the package?

Not at this time
Not at all in fact
And that why I am asking if I should had been promised that space and bandwidth or if they in fact are allocating as stated. This is why I brought this up before I "jump the gun".

 

[Collabora]

Thanks you for the information, please correct me if I am wrong on how I am looking at this

so we have..
GB meaning 1,000MB
and then
GiB meaning 1,024MiB?

Is why my provider are not in the wrong for adverting the specs advertised? As "GB" technically does means 1,000MB?

Technically, yes -- especially if the OS is also using GB for disk and file size. At these sizes it doesn't matter much. But if you start purchasing storage in the terabyte range its good to ask the provider

 

[SenseiSteve]

Great explanation, Collabora. I honestly can't say I've ever seen any web hosting provider offer packages with the term GiB. A great article addressing this on io9.

 

[Silvatech]

And you have every reason to be confused. The answer is actually more complicated than the ones given so far. Let's take a closer look.

The usual (base 10) meaning of the prefix giga- is one billion, so one would expect the term gigabyte to refer to one billion bytes. However, when we talk about digital information we are in the binary world of base 2. The power of 2 which comes closest to 1 billion is 30. In other words

1GB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes

There is a different notation for the binary version. For a binary GB we use GiB (GiB = gibi = giga binary), and so

1 KB = 1,000 bytes
1 KiB (kibi) = 2^10 bytes = 1024 bytes

1 MB = 1,000 KB = 1,000,000 bytes
1 MiB (mebi) = 2^20 bytes = 1024 KiBs = 1,048,576 bytes

1 GB = 1,000 MB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB (gibi) = 2^30 bytes = 1024 MiBs = 1,073,741,824 bytes

1 TB = 1,000 GB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
1 TiB (tebi) = 2^40 bytes = 1024 GiBs = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

In general, the binary version is used for memory and data transmission and the base 10 version for hard drives and storage (sometimes!). Some OSes (Windows) will use the binary value when reporting disk space and file sizes and other OSes the decimal value. In any case if you see a HD advertised as 500 GB, its not crazy to ask yourself: do they mean GB or GiB?
.
.
.
.

Really like the way you laid this out information on this. Similar to trying explain to people why their new 2 TB drive is roughly 1.8 TB.

 

[AltairHosting]

As Collabora stated different conversions are used for different things within the industry so it's worthwhile to educate yourself in regards to whichever one is being used.

 

[cheapdedicated]

Mathmatically It makes alot of sense and ease to round off numbers to their next full number, tens, hundreds etc etc. The exact measure is that there are 1024MB in one gigabyte but for sheer convinced the 24MBs are rounded off to plain 1000MB =1GM.

I would advise though that to avoid confusion you just stick to the more known/accepted 1000MB=1GB wrong as it might be

 

[Localnode]

It's widely accepted that 1GB does in fact equal 1,000MB.
Google themselves do - https://goo.gl/8m3LXu

I'll quote this piece from Wikipedia:

Since the early 2000s, disk drive manufacturers based most consumer hard drive capacities in certain size classes expressed in decimal gigabytes. The exact capacity of a given drive model is close to the class designation. Most manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devices[3][4] define one gigabyte as 1000000000bytes, which is displayed on the packaging. Some operating systems now express hard drive capacity or file size using decimal multipliers (integer powers of 1000), while others, such as Microsoft Windows, still report size in gigabytes by dividing the total capacity in bytes by 1073741824 (230 bytes= 1 gibibyte), while still reporting the result with the symbol GB. This discrepancy causes confusion, as a disk with an advertised capacity of, for example, 400 GB (meaning 400000000000bytes) might be reported by the operating system as 372 GB, meaning 372 GiB. Other software, like Mac OS X 10.6[5] and some components of the Linux kernel[6] use decimal prefixes.

The JEDEC memory standards use IEEE 100 nomenclature which quote the gigabyte as 1073741824bytes (230 bytes).[7]

The difference between units based on decimal and binary prefixes increases as a semi-logarithmic (linear-log) function—for example, the decimal kilobyte value is nearly 98% of the kibibyte, a megabyte is under 96% of a mebibyte, and a gigabyte is just over 93% of a gibibyte value. This means that a 300 GB (279 GiB) hard disk might be indicated variously as 300 GB, 279 GB or 279 GiB, depending on the operating system. As storage sizes increase and larger units are used, these differences become even more pronounced. Some legal challenges have been waged over this confusion such as a lawsuit against drive manufacturer Western Digital.[8][9] Western Digital settled the challenge and added explicit disclaimers to products that the usable capacity may differ from the advertised capacity.[8] Seagate was sued on similar grounds and also settled.[8][10]

Because of its physical design, the capacity of modern computer random access memory devices, such as DIMM modules, is always a multiple of a power of 1024. It is thus convenient to use prefixes denoting powers of 1024, known as binary prefixes, in describing them. For example, a memory capacity of 1073741824bytes is conveniently expressed as 1 GiB rather than as 1.074 GB. The former specification is, however, often quoted as 1 GB when applied to random access memory.[11]

Software allocates memory in varying degrees of granularity as needed to fulfill data structure requirements and binary multiples are usually not required. Other computer capacities and rates, like storage hardware size, data transfer rates, clock speeds, operations per second, etc., do not depend on an inherent base, and are usually presented in decimal units. For example, the manufacturer of a "300 GB" hard drive is claiming a capacity of 300000000000bytes, not 300x10243 (which would be 322122547200) bytes.

I think you'll find most hosts defining GB = 1,000MB.

 

[hmb-patrick]

Hi,

I am agree with Localnode also. Many hosting providers define the round figure for GB to MB like 1GB = 1,000MB.

 

[Collabora]

Hi, I am confused on what is considered a "proper" GB of bandwidth and diskspace.

Some hosts, such as ourselves, don't use disk space or bandwidth quotas to define their hosting plan's limits and in such cases these issues are non-existent.

 

[easyhostmedia]

Thanks you for the information, the provider I am at said that they treat a GB as 1,000MB and not 1,024MB as I thought I should be getting pr GB. With that said should I just get a refund for them not telling me at purchase? Since the package only said..
5GB Diskspace
50GB Bandwidth

And I am not getting those specs that I paid for (since they told me AFTER purchase that a GB is 1,000MB is how they treat it).

all hosts will round it to that rather than say

5.12GB Diskspace
51.2GB Bandwidth

but on the server it will be read as

5.12GB Diskspace
51.2GB Bandwidth

but this is what the plan you have gives you to use, but i bet you will not be using all this

 

[cheapdedicated]

all hosts will round it to that rather than say

5.12GB Diskspace
51.2GB Bandwidth

but on the server it will be read as

5.12GB Diskspace
51.2GB Bandwidth

but this is what the plan you have gives you to use, but i bet you will not be using all this

I actually noticed that my car which is openly declared as a 2000cc engine is actually 1920 and is the same with another that I sold so rounding off is normal and mathematically correct.

 

[easyhostmedia]

I actually noticed that my car which is openly declared as a 2000cc engine is actually 1920 and is the same with another that I sold so rounding off is normal and mathematically correct.

yes its the same when buying goods.

how many store do you go into and see an item selling at $1.346 or $1.344 these will be rounded too $1.35 or $1.34

 

[cheapdedicated]

yes its the same when buying goods.

how many store do you go into and see an item selling at $1.346 or $1.344 these will be rounded too $1.35 or $1.34

As long as the clients understand what the seller means I have no problem. In the case of MBs and GBs majority of our buyers know what to expect and that is the most important. If they think am giving them "more" then I will be happy to keep my technical promise by giving them "more"