RANT: Byte pinching flash memory.

[chrestomanci]

This rant is about how memory cards have gone the way of hard drives, and describe their size in billions of bytes instead of proper megabytes (2**30 bytes)

I brought a 2Gb flash memory card for my mobile phone recently. When it arrived, I checked the size, and it came out as 1,922,727,936 bytes. That is not even 2 billon bytes, let alone the 2,147,483,648 (2**31) bytes I was after. The reason I orderd a 2Gb card is that like a lot of devices, my phone does not support SD-HC memory cards, so 2Gb is the largest size that will work. If I am trying to buy the largest size that will fit, I would want it to be the absolutely largest size possible. I would even pay a small premium not to be pinched 11% of what I wanted.

As it happens the memory card in question was not a Corsair branded one. I am posting here because Corsair sells both flash memory and RAM. I am sure you would never dream of byte pinching on RAM, so why do you and the rest of the industry do it with flash. It is not as if flash is expensive these days, a 2Gb card costs around £15-20 depending on the format these days.

(End of Rant)

[manwithnoname]

Sun of ... Just had a check of my USB pen thing 4GB - 4,294,967,296 bytes

4,096 - used
4,118,065,152 - free

But may be the rest of the missing 'space' is been used by the FAT32

Not sure if flash memory cards would need some kind of file system as well.

[JohntechUPi]

Guy's this is normal and its not Byte pinching, its just the way memory is made in these type of devices. And if you use a different file system like a Mac or Unix file system the available amount will be closer to what you see. The FAT file system is not the most efficent file system and will use anout 10% of the total available for its own use. And no matter what brand you use it will be close to the same.