From: robertwessel2 on
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
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
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
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
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