Hacking Does Anyone know how to allocate the Storage space

[Shiin]

I finally made my G6 work, and my demonic little sister made corrupt again, i have once again fixed it and have found that i cant use 499megs due to the fact that they are not allocated. Can anyone help me here?

 

[jumpman17]

You'll probably have to re-format the card

 

[Shiin]

Done that. leaves em with only the 1meg drive and when i do the managing program, it goes back to 500 when its still really 1meg. THEn when i go Disk manager, it shows that 499MB are not allocated >.

 

[jumpman17]

A possibility is that those un-allocated sectors are corrupt so they can't be allocated. I don't know very much about allocating sectors though so I'm not saying that is what has happened, just a bad possibility.

 

[Topsy]

Did you try fat 16 format? Are there partitions on these G6 lites like a hard drive? Could you repartition it or at least check the partition size?

Edit: DOH fdisk doesn't exist anymore hehehe

 

[ridgecity]

I have a 256m card that got corrupted like that and just stopped being recognized and just freezes my pc if I insert it. I don't know if I can fix it...

 

[Hypnotoad]

Edit: DOH fdisk doesn't exist anymore hehehe

Too funny

 

[Zap]

You have not lost any space due to corruption.

People are miss informed about the storage space. It's common.

Short explanation: Windows will always see slightly smaller sized than the advertised size of the hardware label because it calculates size using a different memory unit system.

Long explanation:

Before the standardized of the binary prefixes, the computer world based the sizing off SI prefixes. SI prefixes calculates storage space using base 10 while binary prefixes calculates storage using base 2. We've all heard the common phrase that 1 MB = 1000 KB. However....

8 bits = 1 byte. This is where both SI and binary are equivalent. Going beyond starts to differ. I will show u how they differ calculating to the bits (the common units of both systems).

SI prefix: Base 10
10^3 = 1,000 bytes = 1 kilobyte
10^6 = 1,000,000 bytes = 1,000 kilobytes = 1 megabyte

binary prefix: Base 2
2^10 = 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
2^20 = 1,048,576 bytes = 1,024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte


Now... for the 512 megabyte in question:

Going with SI:
512 megabyte = 512 x 1 megabyte = 512 x 1,000 kilobytes = 512 x 1,000,000 bytes = 512 x 10^6 = 4,096,000,000 bits
(as you can see, that resembles the 4Gbit we're seeing as advertised on the G6. 1 Gigabit = 1,000,000,000 bits)

Going with binary:
512 megabyte = 512 x 1 megabyte = 512 x 1,024 kilobytes = 512 x 1,048,576 bytes = 512 x 2^20 = 4,294,967,296 bits


The problem is this:
The storage company uses SI prefix (base 10) to claim their storage size. HOWEVER, your windows operating system uses Binary prefix (base 2) to calculate size...

So this is what happens:
The memory manufacturer claims 512 megabyte in base 10, so it comes out to be 4,096,000,000 bits. Again, this bits unit is where both systems are equivalent.
Your computer takes that 4,096,000,000 bits and convert it to megabyte for you.... BUT, it doesn't divide by 1,000 as in base 10. (and also that was how the number was originally obtained) Instead, it divides by 1,024 as your windows operating system calculates off base 2! Thus...

4,096,000,000 bits = 512,000,000 bytes (after dividing by 8 bits) = 500,000 kilobytes (after dividing by 1024 bytes) = 488.28125 megabytes (after dividing by 1024 kilobytes)

Here's proof: http://www.onlineconversion.com/computer_base2.htm

As you have undoubtedly guessed it, the storage manufacturers prefer the SI system using base 10 because it makes their device sounds larger. As for why your computer is reporting 499 megabyte instead of 488 megabyte... All I can say is that there must be some roundings that the system did to obtain that value.

There you have it.

And yes, I'm bored at work and just thought the common flash card community should be aware of this miss leading advertisement.

You may link to this post for any further arguments concerning disk spaces. hehe

 

[yatzr]

you got it backwards zap, he only gets 1MB out of his g6 and can't use the other 499MB

 

[Zap]

... that's what happens when you stay up to 4 playing WoW then come to work at 8...

Anyhow, good facts nonetheless.

EDIT: to use one of your 34 few posts to correct me. I feel special.