Sd Format

[whiskthecat]

My 256mb sd only holds 240 when formatteed with fat or fat32.

Is this right?

If it is that stinks because I have a 250mb video file.

 

[TelcoLou]

You lose some bytes to the Format God everytime you format a card. Unavoidable, I'm afraid.

 

[beanfarmer]

yes thats normal on my 512 card i can only use 490mb of it when formated to fat32

 

[DaveC]

Yeah. All flash media is produced with some bad memory blocks, none are perfect. Those bad blocks are removed from the total memory. The 256 is what it would be if no cells were defective. You will find that the actuall amount of memory will vary a bit per card.

 

[bmilleker]

I always thought a manufacturers 512 is different from the formats 512.
Manufacturer goes by 1000kilobytes per megabyte, and the format goes by 1024. At least thats how hdds work (isn't it?).

 

[cbox]

Yes you are correct all hard drives are that way. For instance I have a 250 gig hard drive, windows says it's 232 gigs.

 

[bmilleker]

So does flash memory work that way also?

 

[Alpha2]

a kilobyte is a kilobyte no matter what it's read on.

 

[rokdcasbah]

a kilobyte is a kilobyte no matter what it's read on.

​

are you saying a kilobyte is always 1000 bytes? because it will be a long time before most people see it that way, if ever.

 

[Robster]

rokdcasbah, you're asking for a religious war here! People will always argue the 1000-vs-1024 point like they argue the vi-vs-emacs or Windows-vs-Linux points. No reason to do it, it's just human nature.

Some pedantic bastards created "kibibytes", symbol kiB, to indicate 1024 bytes, because "k" is the standard symbol for 1000. Then there's "mebibytes" (MiB), and "Gibibytes" (GiB) which are the binary equivalents of Mega and Giga.

Personally, I think it's a tragic waste of time.

As for SD cards: they are actually X * 1024 * 1024 bytes, so they are different to hard disks which are X * 1000 * 1000 bytes. But as DaveC says, some blocks will be bad, and there are other overheads which reduce the usable space.

Finally, I just bought myself a 250GB hard disk. It doesn't matter which type of units you're using, that's a shit-load of space!

 

[grahf]

I just got a new HD also (but i bit the bullet and sprung for a 320gb).
When i was looking around, I noticed the 500gb+ drives that are available these days... thats just an insane amount of storage for a home pc. I remember years ago when i paid $100 for a 1.2gb drive, and thinking how incredibly spacious it was. Then today I barely paid more for 320gb...

 

[Squidge]

SanDisk redefined the terms "megabyte" and "gigabyte" way back in 2001. I've no idea if they've reverted back to the correct terms again, but probably not, as it'll make there cards look smaller

From SanDisk's FAQ:

"Why is the size of my card appearing slightly smaller when read by my system than the capacity listed on the label?"

"SanDisk uses 1000KB to equal 1MB whereas Microsoft and some other companies use 1024KB to equal 1MB.

Example:
Microsoft's MB is 1024KB x 1024KB = 1,048,576KB
Our MB is 1000KB x 1000KB = 1,000,000KB
48,576 KB difference

48,576KB X 64MB (our 64MB CF card) = 3,108,864MB"

Yep, lots of other people are confused at this too...

If Microsoft started redefining bugs as features, there'd be an uproar.

What d'you mean, it already has?

Oh, heck...

 

[Vimacs]

i wonder that there havent been a curt case on that yet, couse 1000 is obviously a plain marketing lie.

 

[xafier]

Finally, I just bought myself a 250GB hard disk. It doesn't matter which type of units you're using, that's a shit-load of space!

​

It's not a lot of space if you download tons I've got a 300Gb drive thats nearly full, a 250Gb thats nearly full and a 200Gb thats half full... I'm thinking of getting a 500Gb soon, but the price per Gb for them is a lot more than for 300Gb HD's, but its all about space saving too... you can get 2 x 300Gb for a 500Gb... but thats twice as much power and space and sockets used... bah

and GiB vs Gb is just one of those annoying thing that so many newbies to computers dont understand... manufacurers confuse people by using the Gb symble to refer to 1 billion bytes, whereas in storage terms its different to what your used to seeing... its not illegal... its just a little misleading... although you'll find usually it says somewhere:

1Gb = 1,000,000,000 bytes

instead of 1,073,741,824 bytes... therefore you lose approx 70Mb per Gb on a hard-drive you buy to what you'd think it should be