help w/ my jump drive

[youngWilliam]

I just bought a Lexar 128 MB jump drive, and when it's plugged into the computer, it says it only has 121.5 MB! is there any way to fix this?

[LorentzForce]

That is correct, and there's nothing wrong with it. With the exception to evil marketing people.

You see, marketing people do their calculations in 1000s, instead of 1024, which the latter is what computers acknowledge. So to calculate the real value;

128 x (1000 x 1000) / (1024 * 1024) = 122.07MB

Well, that's not far from 121.5MB there. That .5 of a MB must be used for something needy, like the file allocation table or such for the drive.

Oh yeah, this goes for actual hard drives too. That's why you see 120GB hard drives as something like 110GB in real life.

Marketing people are evil.

[youngWilliam]

yeah, seeing how much they jack-up prices when it only costs like a dollar to make. my brother got the same type of jump drive, and it has 123.4 MB on it

[Mr. SmartyPants]

yup, ya also notice in many harddrives with a new computer, when it says "40 gig" it doesnt meant there's 40 gigs of space, its susually like 34 gig (cause theres mroe stuff as well) AND zip disks never have 100 megs on it, its always like, 97 megs. Same goes with external harddrives

[Kaligraphic]

Actually, painful as it is to say, the marketing people are correct. Mega and giga are actual SI prefixes meaning (*10^6) and (*10^9), respectively. And some operating systems can show powers-of-ten sizes, it's just that powers-of-two is a lot easier. There exists an official but somewhat silly set of prefixes for the powers-of-two forms - kibi, mebi, gibi, and so on, but people don't use them because they're obscure and sound funny. But your jump drive is fine.

[LorentzForce]

And just to add;

The 2^ series are written simply as;

KiB for kibibytes
MiB for mebibytes
GiB for gibibytes

And so forth. Just an i.

I still hate marketing people. They always abuse people for profit.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

this reminds me of that time somebody went like "40 jigabytes"

[Fsiphskilm]

Well the thing

[Jasdero]

I've got the same thing with my "300 GB" hard drive... It's marketed as 300 GB, but it's actually around 266 GB... >.<

[LorentzForce]

Flash drives are one heck of an amazing technology. I mean, it's storage done ENTIRELY on a silicon chip, without needing electricity to keep it on 1 or 0. Imagine trying to run your computer without electricity. When I learnt of how it works I was very, very amazed. It may cost a $1 to make, but the man (if I remember, although I forgot his name -_-; ) who made it is a genius and should be paid well for his invention.

[Jasdero]

[quote="LorentzForce"]Flash drives are one heck of an amazing technology. I mean, it's storage done ENTIRELY on a silicon chip, without needing electricity to keep it on 1 or 0. Imagine trying to run your computer without electricity. When I learnt of how it works I was very, very amazed. It may cost a $1 to make, but the man (if I remember, although I forgot his name -_-]
Then.. I demand to be paid well for my admiration!!! ( *0*)/

XD

[Fsiphskilm]

[quote="Sunako"]I've got th

[Mr. SmartyPants]

I also don't think it should count though, they should make the 300 GB HD actually 388 so that when you Format it, it'll come out to a perfect ACTUAL 300Gigs.

unfortunately, that doesnt happen =(

[Jasdero]

I've got the same thing with my "300 GB" hard drive... It's marketed as 300 GB, but it's actually around 266 GB... >.<

I've always wondered that, and then i noticed that space is used for icons and file names and whatnot.

I also don't think it should count though, they should make the 300 GB HD actually 388 so that when you Format it, it'll come out to a perfect ACTUAL 300Gigs.

*shakes fist*

That would be very nice... ( *-* ) >.< I really wish they would do that... T^T

[Kaligraphic]

but that wouldn't be 300 gigs - it would be 300 gibs.