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why are USB flash drive "GB" so small?



 
 
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  #1  
Old June 2nd 10, 12:47 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,comp.arch.storage
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Default why are USB flash drive "GB" so small?

On May 27, 8:43*am, George Orwell 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.
  #3  
Old June 3rd 10, 04:10 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,comp.arch.storage
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Default why are USB flash drive "GB" so small?

On Jun 1, 8:58*pm, "Rod Speed" wrote:
wrote:
George Orwell 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.
 




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