This is a myth. The very first harddrive was 5,000,000 characters - in the 1950s. The first PC harddrives came in 10 & 20MB. Harddrives have always been base10. Linespeed has always been base10. Clock speed has always been base10. It's RAM that's the odd one out.
I believe that where the disconnect has occurred, is that when home computing started - RAM is pretty much all you had. We didn't have megabit networking, we didn't have harddrives, if we were lucky we had cassettes. So the binary prefixes were absorbed in isolation.
I believe that where the disconnect has occurred, is that when home computing started - RAM is pretty much all you had. We didn't have megabit networking, we didn't have harddrives, if we were lucky we had cassettes. So the binary prefixes were absorbed in isolation.