why are USB flash drive "GB" so small?
in [Storage]
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From: robertwessel2 on 1 Jun 2010 19:47 On May 27, 8:43 am, George Orwell <nob...(a)mixmaster.it> wrote: > I got a USB flash drive of 8 GB, and it has just a pinch > over 8 x 10^9 bytes. I know magnetic disk GB are so, > but since the flash is solid state, I would expect that > it goes in powers of 2: 1024^3. > So where is the missing 7% of storage? Mostly dedicated to things like manufacturing redundancy, spare sectors and wear leveling. Almost all external storage* has always been rated in the "proper" decimal amounts, the flash drive folks took advantage of that. *CDs (but not DVDs or other optical media) and some floppy formats (the infamous 1.44MB floppy, for example) are exceptions.
From: Rod Speed on 1 Jun 2010 21:58 robertwessel2(a)yahoo.com wrote: > George Orwell <nob...(a)mixmaster.it> wrote >> I got a USB flash drive of 8 GB, and it has just a pinch >> over 8 x 10^9 bytes. I know magnetic disk GB are so, >> but since the flash is solid state, I would expect that >> it goes in powers of 2: 1024^3. >> So where is the missing 7% of storage? > Mostly dedicated to things like manufacturing redundancy, spare sectors and wear leveling. Nope, its just the difference between binary and decimal GBs. > Almost all external storage* has always been rated in the "proper" > decimal amounts, the flash drive folks took advantage of that. There is no point in binary with a hard drive or flash drives. > *CDs (but not DVDs or other optical media) and some floppy formats > (the infamous �1.44MB floppy,� for example) are exceptions. The 1.44MB floppy is in fact a weird binary decimal hybrid.
From: robertwessel2 on 2 Jun 2010 23:10 On Jun 1, 8:58 pm, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed....(a)gmail.com> wrote: > robertwess...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > > George Orwell <nob...(a)mixmaster.it> wrote > >> I got a USB flash drive of 8 GB, and it has just a pinch > >> over 8 x 10^9 bytes. I know magnetic disk GB are so, > >> but since the flash is solid state, I would expect that > >> it goes in powers of 2: 1024^3. > >> So where is the missing 7% of storage? > > Mostly dedicated to things like manufacturing redundancy, spare sectors and wear leveling. > > Nope, its just the difference between binary and decimal GBs. > > > Almost all external storage* has always been rated in the "proper" > > decimal amounts, the flash drive folks took advantage of that. > > There is no point in binary with a hard drive or flash drives. Flash drives are made up of flash chips, which are almost universally made in power-of-two sizes.
From: Rod Speed on 2 Jun 2010 23:18 robertwessel2(a)yahoo.com wrote > Rod Speed <rod.speed....(a)gmail.com> wrote >> robertwess...(a)yahoo.com wrote >>> George Orwell <nob...(a)mixmaster.it> wrote >>>> I got a USB flash drive of 8 GB, and it has just a pinch >>>> over 8 x 10^9 bytes. I know magnetic disk GB are so, >>>> but since the flash is solid state, I would expect that >>>> it goes in powers of 2: 1024^3. >>>> So where is the missing 7% of storage? >>> Mostly dedicated to things like manufacturing redundancy, spare sectors and wear leveling. >> Nope, its just the difference between binary and decimal GBs. >>> Almost all external storage* has always been rated in the "proper" >>> decimal amounts, the flash drive folks took advantage of that. >> There is no point in binary with a hard drive or flash drives. > Flash drives are made up of flash chips, Yep. > which are almost universally made in power-of-two sizes. Wrong.
From: Arno on 3 Jun 2010 20:15 In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage robertwessel2(a)yahoo.com <robertwessel2(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On Jun 1, 8:58?pm, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed....(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> robertwess...(a)yahoo.com wrote: >> > George Orwell <nob...(a)mixmaster.it> wrote >> >> I got a USB flash drive of 8 GB, and it has just a pinch >> >> over 8 x 10^9 bytes. I know magnetic disk GB are so, >> >> but since the flash is solid state, I would expect that >> >> it goes in powers of 2: 1024^3. >> >> So where is the missing 7% of storage? >> > Mostly dedicated to things like manufacturing redundancy, spare sectors and wear leveling. >> >> Nope, its just the difference between binary and decimal GBs. >> >> > Almost all external storage* has always been rated in the "proper" >> > decimal amounts, the flash drive folks took advantage of that. >> >> There is no point in binary with a hard drive or flash drives. > Flash drives are made up of flash chips, which are almost universally > made in power-of-two sizes. Yes, but there is a portion that gets used for spare sectors and wear-leveling management. Arno -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
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