Is there a standard for flash memory's real capacity?
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But actual the true standard is the calculation of what 16 GB works out to in real bytes. However since they do not adhere to what they claim, then it is a Sales and Marketing issue.
Depends how you define a GB
Is a Kb 1000 bytes or 1024 bytes?. It is then multiplied up.
Is it raw capacity or formatted capacity??
Marketing will ALWAYS use the terms that give the largest numbers and often round them up as well.
Life tells you NEVER to believe what a marketing man tells you. Always check for yourself from an alternate source.
$ bc -q
scale=4
a=16*1000*1000*1000
a
16000000000
c=16*1024*1024*1024
c
[b]17179869184[b]
b=a/1024/1024/1024
b
14.9011
The drive has 16,000,000,000 bytes available. But for the drive to show up on the computer as actually 16 GB, there would need to be 17,179,869,184 bytes.
When you divide the number of bytes back out as the computer sees it, then you get your 14.9 GB of actual space.
On top of that, as Dave mentioned, your partition table and filesystem need to use some of that space, so you end up with even less than that. (Though the overhead is pretty small compared to what you "lost" in the marketing explained above)
Drives are actually what they are claimed to be (generally in small print) but unless you use the drive "RAW" then you won't get that amount and it has been that way for a very long time.
If you want the extra space then use it raw. Might still be in the code.
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