Desktop Help//Disk size entry/MAC address

[Harold Schreckengost <mewshi gmail com>]

Hey everyone;
If I could get some constructive criticism on these, it'd be much 
appreciated.  Thanks!

H. Schreck

Why is my 500GB disk 480GB?

When you go to obtain the size of a disk, you will probably be slightly surprised to find that it is actually smaller than the manufacturer claims.  This isn't due to any bug, however; rather, this is due to a difference in numbers.

A kilobyte (kiB) is, according to a computer, 1024 bytes, based on a power of two.  In turn, a megabyte (MiB) is 1024 KB, and one gigabyte (GiB) is 1024 MB.

However, most manufacturers use base 10 - that is, a kilobyte (KB) is 1000 bytes, a megabyte (MB) is 1000 KB, and one gigabyte (GB) is 1000 MB.

This can cause some confusion, apparently.  Here are the numbers for a 500GB disk:

According to a manufacturer, there are (roughly) 500 billion bytes of data available on a 500GB drive.  Using base 2, as a computer does, this yields a size of 476.84GB - or roughly 480GB.

This is common to most storage devices, including hard drives, USB drives, and portable media players.

When configuring a network, it is possible you will need to know your MAC address.  A MAC address is a unique identifier specific to a certain piece of networking hardware.  The fact that it is a unique identifier makes it very useful information, especially when attempting to limit network access to certain machines, such as keeping machines outside of a household from connecting to a wireless network.

To find your MAC address:
1)  Right-click the Network Manager applet.
2)  Select "Connection Information".
3)  If you are only connected to one network, you may skip this step.
Select the tab for the interface from which you wish to obtain a MAC address.  For example, an ethernet connection will be ethX, with X being a number (usually 0).  Wireless connections will have the name of the wireless network to which you are connected in the tab.
4)  Locate the "Hardware Address:" field.  This will be your MAC address, in the form xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx.