Comments on: Why Is My 32GB Flash Drive Actually 29.8 GB?

By: OptimalSupreme

OptimalSupreme — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:45:09 +0000

Wrong, ITs the way that x86 sees it. Amiga a true Unix system, and sees ,more then what is available or sees all the available space, and a 32 gig thumb-drive I can have 35 gigs. Its just an excuse for a redefinition of how crappy x86 architecture is .Plus how old and arcane it is.

By: bobbintb

bobbintb — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 22:57:38 +0000

technically, it is not the drive manufactures in the wrong. the prefix -kilo means 1000. in reality it is the pc vendors you are using the incorrect terminology. now the drive manufacturers may have done this as a marketing gimmick back in the day or there may have been just an honest disconnect. i dont know. there is a slow movement to start using the proper terms, and i believe even the latest mac os correct defines a gigabyte as 1000 kilobytes.

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:44:22 +0000

Your explanation correct, but very simplified.

For those more detail oriented, the difference is how the 2 groups count. As you say, the disk manufacturers took the cheaper way out. They use “normal” “base 10″ or “decimal” counting. On the other hand computers have 2 states, on or off, so they “count” using “base 2″ or “Binary”. This difference is also the reason for strange results where say 3+2 does NOT equal 5 (but in much larger numbers or smaller). Decimal numbers are converted to an from binary, causing rounding errors.

Back at the start of computing, the difference wasn’t significant, but now that anyone can buy multiple terabytes at home for US$100-200 the diffence is getting more troublesome. On a TB drive, the difference is 93GB. The next increment is Petabytes, there is 117,253 GB difference or 115 TB!

PS: you answered this question back in 2004 (but the page is gone): http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips-pr.php/6276

By: DJL

DJL — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:18:35 +0000

Formatted capacity is ALWAYS less than the rated sizes. It has more to do with the way the computer actually works rather than the manufacturers trying to cheat us.

This is where you really get into it. It’s about parity, and bits and bytes and word size and how much space it takes to store that comma or character in the memory spot. There’s SO much more going on that takes some considerable depth but it really has nothing to do with the manufacturers not complying with the 1024 kilobyte size or anything like that.

Blame the folks who invented the file system and file structures. 1 kb is still 1024 bits no matter how you look at it.

There are spaces accounted for bad sections of the hard drive/flash drive that the file creators don’t give you access to.

There’s space used up by the file system to ‘index’ the amount of space. All those things gobble up the 1024 bits that make up a Kb…leaving you with much less space than you thought you should have.

Absolutely nothing to do with the manufactures quibbling about what makes up a bit and a byte.

Sincerely,

DJL

By: Eric Peterson

Eric Peterson — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:45:16 +0000

Thank you for explaining that, while I am very tech savvy,this is the first time I’ve actually seen it explained this way. And while I personally think it’s a bunch of BS what the storage manufacturers are doing, I alone cannot make them change their systems. I’d prefer if every hard-drive, flash-drive, cd, dvd, blu-ray or whatever would actually list the true size of the device once it has been formatted for the computer. I don’t mean to say sell a 32gb flash-drive as 29.8gb. I mean just have somewhere on the label the actual size after formatting. That way, when someone make a purchase, they know exactly how much free space they will have. At least then, they will know when buying a 1tb hard-drive that they will only get approximately 976gb and not the full terabyte>