Partition text fields should respect MiB/MB notation

[mikro]

I found this out only by accident -- I have "MB" (1000B = 1 KB) set in Preferences. So I assumed that if I want 1 GiB partition, I should enter "1000" and not "1024" (display mode: MB, of course). To my surprise, partitions became much smaller, because the size is 1000 * 1024 * 1024 bytes.

[uweseimet]

Yes, you are right, this is not consistent. Thank you for pointing this out. I will fix this with the next release.

[uweseimet]

Thinking a bit more about this, I'm not so sure anymore that your expectation is right. If you want to create a 1GB partition, you enter 1000 MB. But you wanted to create a 1 GiB partition, which has 1024 MiB. Even 1024 MB would not result in a 1 GiB partition, because 1024 MB is still less than 1024 MiB. So only with 1024 MiB you end up with a 1 GiB partition.

[mikro]

Actually you're right, it's quite tricky, isn't it.

After some thought I'm not so sure about the meaningfulness of this as well. Because if I have "full TOS4 partition" in mind, typing 1073.741824 is definitely not something I would do in "MB" mode.

Perhaps the only solution (apart from leaving it as it is and change the notation to "MiB" instead of "MB" in the dialog) would be to rework the whole dialog to something as:

[type - text] [size - text] [unit - combo box]

In that way I would be always sure what I'm entering and in what units. But frankly, it makes sense only for MB/GB these days (who would want to enter partition size in bytes/kilobytes, right?) and MB/GB are not that far away from each other so... yes, just change the labels to "MiB" and it's fixed. ;-)

[uweseimet]

I'm not sure what you mean with changing the labels. Which labels should be changed? All labels should depend on the HDDRUTIL setting for the capacity display. Are there any labels that do not reflect this setting when you change it?

[mikro]

I mean in non-sector mode do not display "MB" buy "MiB" instead so users will know they are entering actual 1024-based units.

[uweseimet]

HDDRUTIL already does this. When you select "GiB/MiB" in the settings the partitioning dialog reflects this. Am I missing something?

[mikro]

But the point is not to reflect it, or have I misunderstood something? I thought we've agreed that it doesn't make sense to enter "MB", that it always makes sense to enter numbers in "MiB", so the dialog should show "MiB", regardless of the "MB/MiB" settings. Or do you have something else in mind?

[uweseimet]

If you want to create a 1 GB partition you should use the "GB/MB" setting, which results in sizes (entered and displayed) based on multiples of 1000. If you want to create a 1 GiB partition you should use the "GiB/MIB" setting, which results in sizes (entered and displayed) based on multiples of 1024.
You should not expect some kind of magic (which I think was your initial assumption) when you mix units and numbers, e.g. by setting "MB/GB" in the preferences and entering multiples of 1024. Entering 1000 will never result in a size of 1 GiB, regardless of the unit settings, and you would have to enter 1073.741824. But that's just the way these units work.