UUIDs on drives

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 12:27 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:

> When you find some duplication, _then_ object.  I don't believe you're ever
> going to find any, even with a 4-byte vfat UUID.   2**128 is still a very
> big number.

A quick clarification here.  With a 4 byte number, there is a 1 in 2**32
(about 1 in 4 billion) chance of duplicating a UUID.  It is not 1 chance
in 2**128 which is for a 128 bit number.

To get an idea of the size of 2**128 it is bigger than the estimated
number of atoms in the known universe by many many orders of magnitude.
The number of atoms in the universe is approximately 10**80 which is
approximately 2**83.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
smoot at tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005