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1gb memory stick.

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matty34 | 21:22 Thu 31st Aug 2006 | Technology
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I've bought a 1gb memory stick from novatech. and when i right click on removable drives(e) in my computer then propeties.. its says "961mb" why isnt it 1gb:S

thanks for any1 helps
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Because it takes a few mb of memory for it to work - the software pre-installed to make it do anything.

An empty 1gb memory stick would not be able to do anything at all.

It's exactly the same when you buy a 1gbmp3 plaeyer - there is not 1gb available.
Ethel's kind of right but, imho, not really.

First of all, there is the binary counting system and the decimal counting system. Decimal goes from 0 to 9 (10 numbers), and is what we use every day as humans. Computers use binary, 0's and 1's. The manufacturers always quote their numbers in decimal, yet the computer has to use the capacity in binary, so there is a slight difference.

To find the difference divide your number in GB by 1024^3:

1,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 931MB

This usually accounts for the main reason of the drop in capacity. The difference is due to the way the file system is constructed on the disk, plus the fact that the memory stick's capacity is not precisely 1GB.
You don't need any pre-installed software to make it do anything.

There is a discrepancy between the way manufacturers describe their devices, and the way the size is properly calculated. There are 1024 Mb in a Gb, but (just as with hard drives) the manufacturs calculate by pretending that there are 1000 Mb in a Gb.

Any other variations in size will be due to the formating of the drive.

For example, formating my 1 Gb drivet gives the following results:

Using FAT gives usable space of 1,039,892,480 bytes (991 Mb)
Using FAT32 gives usable space of 1,038,118,008 bytes (990 Mb)
Using NTFS gives free space of 1,32,283,136 bytes (984 Mb)
Sorry fo3nix - typing while you were posting...
At least we reached the same conclusion!
Apologies for misleading you, matty.

:)
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thank you for all your help

matty34:)

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