128Gb Usb Stick

[renegadefm]

Just bought a 128GB 3.0 usb stick, but on my computer is says its only 114GB free.

 

I formatted it thinking it might restore the other 14GB but it remains 114GB.

 

Surely I am being denied 14GB's

 

Any ideas? 

[renegadefm]

Oh it was brand new by the way. 

[ToraToraTora]

yes it needs a directory for the potential files that you will store on it. It needs to be able to address every block and sector, to do that it has to use some of the space on the volume. Although the hardware for HDD and SDDs have advanced greatly the software has not it still uses a structure devised in the 60s.

[ToraToraTora]

PS I should say that a USB stick is still basically a disc drive as far as the OS is concerned.

[Old_Geezer]

Yeah, likely nicked for data management purposes.

[Gromit]

I am sure TTT is correct, but 14Gb for a directory is a lot.

It is a long time since I formated an external drive, but I seem to remember there were several options?

[Old_Geezer]

Use disk management to look at the situation.

[ToraToraTora]

Yes I didn't want to go into that, there is FAT32 and NFTS now my guess is it is formatted with FAT32 which has limitations with address reach thus it needs to indirectly address a lot of it that takes space. NFTS is better. It's hard to imagine how large 128gb is. I can remember early drives where 16mb was considered huge. Remember regardless of the hardware it has to be able to address every block in every sectore. The machine still thinks it's an actual disc.

Right click on the drive in "this PC" and look at what file system is uses, let us know what that is.

[renegadefm]

Thanks everyone. I went to disk management on my computer, but it says 114gb free. 

 

No sign of 128gb.

 

Assuming this is normal, why sell the product as a 128gb and not 114gb which is all there is of usable space.

Its not a massive deal, but to lose 14gb does seem a bit excessive. 

[Old_Geezer]

Industry practice. The full amount is there if you can find a way not to need the management requirement.

[renegadefm]

ToraToraTora, 

Thanks, yes its an NTFS format, or formatted using NTFS, other option was exfat. 

 

But I will say even before I formatted it the minute I took it out of the packaging and inserted into my computer, it came up asking what do I want to do with this drive, but it showed up in my computer folder as 114gb available. 

 

So then in my madness I thought I would format it with NTFS, and its exactly the same 114gb.

[Radagast]

Some years ago the definition of one kilobyte was changed from 1024 bytes to 1000 bytes. This makes computer storage quantities somewhat strange.

[Old_Geezer]

Buying planed wood is worse. They quote the initial timber size they claim they planed, not the size you end up buying.

[ToraToraTora]

I suspect it came formatted already, they usually do these days.

[bhg481]

Do you think 1 KB is 1000 bytes? It's actually 1024 (= 2^^10) bytes. So we have 2 definitions for a kilobyte. The same argument allplies to MB and GB etc. Your stick will probably have 128 million bytes on it but this is not 128GB. I can't be bothered to work it out but 128 million bytes is probably 114GB using computer definitions.

 

[ToraToraTora]

16:30 no, the confusion arise because in IT K is often used to mean kilo but it is in fact Kibi thus 1024 is a kibibyte and 1000 is a kilobyte. In everyday language a K suffix is meant to be x 1000 but in IT it generally means 1024. It's all to do with powers of 2.

[ToraToraTora]

lets take a 32 bit machine for simplicity. 32 bits, 4 bytes can be used to address 4gb, actually 4 gibibytes, but convenstion and repeated mis use means it's known erroneously as  a giga byte, 4,000,000,000 bytes but it is in fact 4,294,967,296 (2^32)

[Radagast]

Never heard of a kibibyte.

[Togo]

https://techterms.com/definition/kibibyte#:~:text=A%20kibibyte%20%28KiB%29%20is%20a%20unit%20of%20data,to%20the%20multiple%20possible%20definitions%20of%20a%20kilobyte.

[ToraToraTora]

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/kibibyte

 

[Peter Pedant]

In everyday language a K suffix is meant to be x 1000 but in IT it generally means 1024. 

every day language : no in SI usage ( systeme internationale - the agreed system of units, the one at which CGS DDDDDIIIIIIIEEEEDDD! and good job too)

which is eentsy weentsy diffrent to metric O( honestly TTT should know this and indeed may later aver - he did !

This thread cd go back 150 y and missy has bought a quarter of choccies and is one choccy short

scream scream scream

some things never change