Flash Drive showing incorrect size.

NFF · 04-12-2006

Well I bought a 1 GB MP3/MP4 player off ebay and it has 1GB of flash memory in it. As I loaded the player with music and videos I noticed that after a certain amount of data was loaded, the files that were added last after about 200 MB would not read right or the data would get corrupted. I search this forum and found that someone also had a similar problem with their SD memory card ( http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....highlight=size ) <===exactly the same problem I was having. After formatting it many times with different settings and it still doing the same thing I got the bright idea to try to partition the memory (didn't know if it could be done) to see what would happen. I resized the current partition to 105 MB with paragon partition manager (yes it partitioned the flash drive) and when I pressed Apply, it did its thing and then froze. I reopened the program and saw that it did resize the primary flash partition and the rest said "Unallocated space". Well windows would not let me format this space for some reason and wanted to see if linux could. So I fired up my linux machine, at first fdisk saw the 105 partition and the unallocated space, so then I made fdisk delete all partitions. I formatted with FAT and then went back to Windows to see if I could do a complete format again but all it saw was a 105MB drive. I opened the partition manager again, and it only showed the 105 MB with no unallocated space this time. So now I'm confused. Where did the rest of that 1GB go? Its not showing up anymore in Linux or Windows and just shows it as a 105MB drive no matter what I do. I knew I shouldn't have tried that.

Did I mess up this memory for good? or is there a program I can download to get windows to see the rest of that 1 GB? Any ideas?

*xtacydima* · 11-12-2006

did you try

Right click My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management

Much easier to use witin Windows to modify partitions

tommy_nw · 17-12-2006

did you read the info on ebay about all the fake sized Flash Drive's, MP3 players etc listed on ebay and what to look out for??
hope i am wrong but sounds as if you may have purchased one

zash · 08-07-2007

Hello,
Recently I bought a 8GB TwinMOS Mobile Disk Z4 K24 USB drive. It has driver cd. As i wanted to make this usb drive bootable, so i ran the program iFormat v419 and with boot checkbox marked i formated the drive. But by accident i did not see that the drive size is selected as 32MB. So the worst thing happened, now i have 32MB usb drive. I have tried but failed to make this to 8GB drive. I am very upset, please tell me did you find any sloution for this kind of problem? I saw you had similar problem. Please could you help me NFF!

zash

Les_VIC · 11-03-2009

Hi, I've got an EZcool usb drive which was advertized at 12 GB, but only comes up at 11 GB, From a well known shop in Melbourne [ I'd never buy from Ebay ]. When I complained, they just said 'that's the way it is' !. Am I the only one that's been conned like this ?

Anyone know of an Honest Company or Shop in Melbourne who advertizes the Correct Flash Drive Capacities ?

Thanks.

**mciahel** · 11-03-2009

Hi and Welcome!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Les_VIC

Hi, I've got an EZcool usb drive which was advertized at 12 GB, but only comes up at 11 GB, From a well known shop in Melbourne (...).

Storage device manufacturers calculate different from Windows display.
12 GB = 12 000 MB = 12 000 000 kB = 12 000 000 000 Bytes.
Windows should display something in the order of 11 400 MB.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

Michael

Les_VIC · 12-03-2009

Hi mciahel, and thanks for the quick reply.

Well, whichever way the capacity is calculated, 1024 bytes is still 1KB, in anyone’s math’s. Now divide that into 12 Gigs, what’s the answer ?, now divide that into 11 Gigs, and what’s the answer ?.

To me, and according to pure math’s, the actual storage capacity is NOT as advertised.

It cannot hold 12 GB of data, when it’s advertised as being able to hold 12 gig.

Isn’t there a law in Australia regulating these things?
For instance, if you buy say a 3 GHz CPU, it WILL run at 3 GHz, I know, I have a couple. If they didn’t run at the advertised specs, the public would have something to say about it.

Computer ram is another. How come all my ram IS the capacity advertised ?

My 1 gig’s are 1 gig. My 4 gig’s are 4 gig. Same Calculations by the way.

Anyhow, thanks. I'll question a company before I buy in future, and I want it in Print.

*Whappo* · 12-03-2009

I see it as just marketing nonsense. Take a hard drive for example, it may say 500GB, but the marketeers are using 1000 instead of 1024 to arrive at that number. You mention your CPU speed and ram, but what about your hard disk/s? My 8GB flash drive is 7.45GB usable.

Les_VIC · 12-03-2009

Hi Whappo,

I don’t want to make a deal out of this, but I presume this is what the forum is for.

Long ago, I bought a 1 Gig USB, it was expensive. It holds a bit over 1 Gig.

I bought a 4 Gig, it holds a little over 4 Gig.
I bought an 8 Gig, it holds a little over 8 Gig.

So, what’s gone wrong ? 8 Gig seems to be the industrial limit for Honesty.

I mainly mentioned this because I’ve been thinking of getting either a 32 Gig, or a 64 Gig USB drive. Incidentally, the so called 12 Gig USB also shows Less than 11 gig under Linux, so it’s not just Windows.

I found this link to test USB drives. Not relying on what Windows shows. It’s free!.
I’m testing the 12 Gig USB as I type.

There is the Link. [ from Germany ].

http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com...apacity-flash/

Marketing Nonsense ? When you pay for a Gallon of Petrol, you expect a Gallon of Petrol. Nobody can argue with that.

**mciahel** · 12-03-2009

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Les_VIC

So, what’s gone wrong ? 8 Gig seems to be the industrial limit for Honesty.

Most manufacturers of storage devices decided to use
1 GB = 1 000 000 000 bytes. If you buy a retail device, then this is written on the box (in very small letters of course).

Quote:

Incidentally, the so called 12 Gig USB also shows Less than 11 gig under Linux, so it’s not just Windows.

Some Linux distros are more precisely and use GiB instead of GB

In addition, a fraction of the gross space is used for file system data and therefore the reported available space is smaller than what was written on the device.

Quote:

I found this link to test USB drives. Not relying on what Windows shows. It’s free!.
There is the Link. [ from Germany ].
http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com...apacity-flash/

This was even worse, since 2 GB devices were in fact only equipped with 1 GB of memory.

Quote:

Marketing Nonsense ? When you pay for a Gallon of Petrol, you expect a Gallon of Petrol. Nobody can argue with that.

Well, there is the GB and there is the GiB.
And there is the UK Gallon vs. US Gallon

Michael

jahcriado · 05-06-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Les_VIC

Hi, I've got an EZcool usb drive which was advertized at 12 GB, but only comes up at 11 GB, From a well known shop in Melbourne [ I'd never buy from Ebay ]. When I complained, they just said 'that's the way it is' !. Am I the only one that's been conned like this ?

Anyone know of an Honest Company or Shop in Melbourne who advertizes the Correct Flash Drive Capacities ?

Thanks.

Theres one thing people forget about when it come to memory: formatting. Think of it as a house or book shelf. Say you build a house thats 30ft by 70ft, no walls, cabinets or anything. Thats 2100ft. But once you put in walls, cabinets, toilets, sinks & what not, you loose a lot of that floor space. You "formated" the empty house into something useful. Same with HDD's & flash drives. To use that 12GB drive file allocation tables need to written & so on. It takes up a certain percentage of space, which is why my 750GB drives only can use 678GB of the space. Sucks, yes, but it deepends on the filing system how much is going to be used so they can't really say its a 678GB drive either. Its the way of tech.

**mciahel** · 05-06-2009

Hi and Welcome!

Quote:

Originally Posted by jahcriado

which is why my 750GB drives only can use 678GB of the space.

This is NOT due to formatting. It is the GB vs. GiB thing mentioned before.

Michael

*brokenbuga* · 06-06-2009

Best description I've found on the binary vs. decimal confusion.

123qwerty1234 · 01-09-2011

I had the same issue today. If you have a mac simply open up your disk utility and format the drive and then under the partitions tab select 1 partition and apply.. worked fine for me

*AllanDeGroot* · 01-09-2011

Ok because your computer counts in multiples of 2^10 instead of 10^3 you think you are getting ripped off?

They are sold as "GB" not "GiB"
and a GB is clearly defined as 1,000,000,000

This is an old whine that has not improved with age.

GET OVER IT!

The meaning of this is that instead of having 750MILLION 1000s,You have 690-ish million 1024's

And you know what the difference REALLY is? Semantics! The difference is meaningless to you as a user.

It's the same ammount of data storage either way it's just being counted in different numbering systems

Would you feel older if you are 40 and someone told you you were 65 Venus years old?
Would you feel Younger if someone told you you were only 21 Martian years old?

IF you answer yes to either you are neither older or younger, you are just bad at math.
(and likely someone who spends more than a dollar a week on lottery tickets)

AD

04-12-2006	#1
NFF New on Forum Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 1	Flash Drive showing incorrect size. Well I bought a 1 GB MP3/MP4 player off ebay and it has 1GB of flash memory in it. As I loaded the player with music and videos I noticed that after a certain amount of data was loaded, the files that were added last after about 200 MB would not read right or the data would get corrupted. I search this forum and found that someone also had a similar problem with their SD memory card ( http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....highlight=size ) <===exactly the same problem I was having. After formatting it many times with different settings and it still doing the same thing I got the bright idea to try to partition the memory (didn't know if it could be done) to see what would happen. I resized the current partition to 105 MB with paragon partition manager (yes it partitioned the flash drive) and when I pressed Apply, it did its thing and then froze. I reopened the program and saw that it did resize the primary flash partition and the rest said "Unallocated space". Well windows would not let me format this space for some reason and wanted to see if linux could. So I fired up my linux machine, at first fdisk saw the 105 partition and the unallocated space, so then I made fdisk delete all partitions. I formatted with FAT and then went back to Windows to see if I could do a complete format again but all it saw was a 105MB drive. I opened the partition manager again, and it only showed the 105 MB with no unallocated space this time. So now I'm confused. Where did the rest of that 1GB go? Its not showing up anymore in Linux or Windows and just shows it as a 105MB drive no matter what I do. I knew I shouldn't have tried that. Did I mess up this memory for good? or is there a program I can download to get windows to see the rest of that 1 GB? Any ideas?

11-12-2006	#2
xtacydima Former Moderator Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Brooklyn, NY, USA Posts: 4,009	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. did you try Right click My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management Much easier to use witin Windows to modify partitions __________________ My Rig: Corsair Obsidian 750D Corsair HX Series CMPSU-1000HX 1000W PSU Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz running Win7 Ultimate 64bit Corsair H50 Hydro Cooler CWCH50 Intel BOXDZ77GA70K LGA 1155 Intel Z77 motherboard Corsair DOMINATOR 16GB (4 x 4GB) ASUS ENGTX570 DCII/2DIS/1280MD5 GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 SAMSUNG 840 Pro 512GB Series MZ-7PD512BW WD Caviar Black 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s WD Caviar Black 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s ASUS DRW-24B1ST Pioneer BD-RW BDR-206D *when needed...* Lite-On LTR-52246S 6S0F (via USB 2.0 to IDE) Lite-On JLMS XJ-HD166S DS1C (via USB 2.0 to IDE) *NEC 3500AG 2.TC Quiet* (via USB 2.0 to IDE) Lite-On SOHW 1673S JS07 (via USB 2.0 to IDE) Found a Solution here helpful? Like the forum's? Well then, what are you waiting for JOIN NOW**!!!

17-12-2006	#3
tommy_nw CD Freaks Rookie Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Australia Posts: 43	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. did you read the info on ebay about all the fake sized Flash Drive's, MP3 players etc listed on ebay and what to look out for?? hope i am wrong but sounds as if you may have purchased one

08-07-2007	#4
zash New on Forum Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 1	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. Hello, Recently I bought a 8GB TwinMOS Mobile Disk Z4 K24 USB drive. It has driver cd. As i wanted to make this usb drive bootable, so i ran the program iFormat v419 and with boot checkbox marked i formated the drive. But by accident i did not see that the drive size is selected as 32MB. So the worst thing happened, now i have 32MB usb drive. I have tried but failed to make this to 8GB drive. I am very upset, please tell me did you find any sloution for this kind of problem? I saw you had similar problem. Please could you help me NFF! zash

11-03-2009	#5
Les_VIC New on Forum Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 3	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. Hi, I've got an EZcool usb drive which was advertized at 12 GB, but only comes up at 11 GB, From a well known shop in Melbourne [ I'd never buy from Ebay ]. When I complained, they just said 'that's the way it is' !. Am I the only one that's been conned like this ? Anyone know of an Honest Company or Shop in Melbourne who advertizes the Correct Flash Drive Capacities ? Thanks. Last edited by Les_VIC; 11-03-2009 at 19:30. Reason: footnote

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12-03-2009	#7
Les_VIC New on Forum Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 3	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. Hi mciahel, and thanks for the quick reply. Well, whichever way the capacity is calculated, 1024 bytes is still 1KB, in anyone’s math’s. Now divide that into 12 Gigs, what’s the answer ?, now divide that into 11 Gigs, and what’s the answer ?. To me, and according to pure math’s, the actual storage capacity is NOT as advertised. It cannot hold 12 GB of data, when it’s advertised as being able to hold 12 gig. Isn’t there a law in Australia regulating these things? For instance, if you buy say a 3 GHz CPU, it WILL run at 3 GHz, I know, I have a couple. If they didn’t run at the advertised specs, the public would have something to say about it. Computer ram is another. How come all my ram IS the capacity advertised ? My 1 gig’s are 1 gig. My 4 gig’s are 4 gig. Same Calculations by the way. Anyhow, thanks. I'll question a company before I buy in future, and I want it in Print.

12-03-2009	#8
Whappo MyCE Resident Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 2,691	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. I see it as just marketing nonsense. Take a hard drive for example, it may say 500GB, but the marketeers are using 1000 instead of 1024 to arrive at that number. You mention your CPU speed and ram, but what about your hard disk/s? My 8GB flash drive is 7.45GB usable.

06-06-2009	#13
brokenbuga MyCE Resident Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: West Coast USA Posts: 1,015	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. Best description I've found on the binary vs. decimal confusion.

01-09-2011	#14
123qwerty1234 New Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 1	Re: Flash Drive showing incorrect size. I had the same issue today. If you have a mac simply open up your disk utility and format the drive and then under the partitions tab select 1 partition and apply.. worked fine for me

01-09-2011	#15
AllanDeGroot MyCE Resident Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 1,442	Ok because your computer counts in multiples of 2^10 instead of 10^3 you think you are getting ripped off? They are sold as "GB" not "GiB" and a GB is clearly defined as 1,000,000,000 This is an old whine that has not improved with age. GET OVER IT! The meaning of this is that instead of having 750MILLION 1000s,You have 690-ish million 1024's And you know what the difference REALLY is? Semantics! The difference is meaningless to you as a user. It's the same ammount of data storage either way it's just being counted in different numbering systems Would you feel older if you are 40 and someone told you you were 65 Venus years old? Would you feel Younger if someone told you you were only 21 Martian years old? IF you answer yes to either you are neither older or younger, you are just bad at math. (and likely someone who spends more than a dollar a week on lottery tickets) AD

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