Your Hard Drive Lies to You

fenderdb writes "Brad Fitzgerald of LiveJournal fame has written a utility and a quick article on how all hard drives from the consumer level to the highest level 'enterprise' grade SCSI and SATA drives do not obey the fsync() function. Manufacturers are blatantly sacrificing integrity in favor of scoring higher on 'pure speed' performance benchmarking."

Hardly a new thing...

[|>>?]

Since when do computers do what you mean?

What's this?

[binaryspiral]

Hard drive manufacturers screwing over customers? Why, who would have thought?

1 billion bytes equals 1 gigabyte - since when?

Dropped MTBF right after reducing the 3 year standard wrty to a 1 year - good timing.

Now this?

Wow what a track record of consumer loving...

...and Statistics.

[Kaenneth]

So, do you think someone typed "Nuclear weapons are being developed by the government of Iraq.^H^Hn." just before the power went out?

In other news....

[ToraUma]

96% of Livejournal users replied, "What's a hard drive? Is that like a modem?"

Seems fair enough: We lie to our hardrives too

[MonsieurCoward]

... "Swear to you there's no pr0n there !!"

Re:What's this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actualy you are wrong.

1024 is always "Kilo". 1000 is "thou".

So a kilometer is 1024 meters? Thanks for the correction! From now on I'll start saying "thoumeters" when I mean "1000 meters".

Re:What's this?

[krymsin01]

Down with the kilometer. Up with the thoumeter!

Damn processor industry...

[fo0bar]

using the wrong definitions to make their products seem bigger. I bought a P4 2.4GHz CPU the other day, and was shocked to find it wasn't 2,576,980,377.6Hz like it should be! Lying thieves...

Re:What's this?

[pyrrhonist]

2^30 bytes = 1 gibibyte.

AaARaaGGgHHhh! I simply loathe the IEC binary prefix names.

Kibibits sounds like dog food [kibblesnbits.com].

"Kibibits, Kibibits, I'm gonna get me some Kibibits..."

Re:Damn processor industry...

[spectecjr]

Ooops. Make that 2,400,000,000 not 2,400,000,000,000. That's the problem with big numbers - it's like spelling bananananananananananana - once you start you can't stop.

Re:Hardly a new thing...

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

You must be new here. Computers always do what you tell them to do in the command line. What, you're using a gui? Well that's your fault then.

Re:Hardly a new thing...

[pyrrhonist]

Computers always do what you tell them to do in the command line.

They sure do.

$ rm -rf * .o
$ ls -a
. ..
$

FUCK!!!!!

Re:In other news....

[ameoba]

No. It's memory. I just can't figure out why all these games that say 512MB is optimal are runnign so slow when I have 120GB.

Re:Hardly a new thing...

[pyropunk51]

I really hate this damned machine!
I wish that I could sell it.
It never does quite what I want,
But only what I tell it!

Re:What's this?

[darien]

No need to get all holier-than-thou.

Re:Damn processor industry...

[ShagratTheTitleless]

2,400,000,000,000 cycles per second

Fucking Trillahertz! or is it Terrahertz! Either way, imagine a Beowulf Clu....[Post terminated by Karma Police]

Re:Marketing created the 'confusion'

[Anonymous Coward]

But in the long run, you gotta admit the change makes sense, from a standardisation point of view.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that they're going to make us give up pounds and miles.

Re:Hardly a new thing...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Is there a difference? ;-)

I don't know about you, but when I mod slashdot, I'm almost always drunk or stoned. Really, it's the only way to fit in.

Re:Err... "lying" is the default setting. RTFM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, users are stupid, have the screen state:
'Making sure your data doesn't get corrupted, DON'T TURN THE COMPUTER OFF UNTIL WE SAY SO!'

Re:What's this?

[operagost]

My computer gets forty gibibytes to the thoumeter, and that's the ways I likes it!

Re:What's this?

[pyrrhonist]

So you prefer ambiguity? I'm sorry, but "pyrrhonist doesn't like the sound of the word" is NO reason to continue using ambiguous language.

Relax, it was supposed to be a jo....

waitaminute....

You're the guy who came up with these prefixes aren't you?