Bought a 512MB Sandisk, but it shows as 468MB??

DaniDavidomovido · Post by **DaniDavidomovido** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:49 pm

I bought a 512MB SanDisk Memory Stick Pro Duo and when I put it in my psp, it showed as 468MB? And then after I formatted it, it came out to 467MB. I also checked the filesize on my pc and it said the samething. Is this normal? :(

zigzag · Post by **zigzag** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:22 pm

Yes its normal, rest of the space is used up by the filesystem.

AlexGreen · Post by **AlexGreen** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:59 pm

You see this size because manufacturers of harddrives and flash memory decided that it's nice to say that one megabyte is 1000000 bytes, not 1024x1024 bytes. So there you have it - 512megabytes on the ad turns into 488 real megabytes.

PompeySteve · Post by **PompeySteve** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:53 pm

zigzag wrote:Yes its normal, rest of the space is used up by the filesystem.

It does make me laugh that Sony et al can get away with selling a 512Mb memory stick and say that only 468Mb or so is available as the rest is for "management". I have a 1Gb MS Duo and I lose even more!

It's like buying a 200Gb drive, you're actually getting about 190Gb because of the reasons given in the previous post...

Post by **blackdroid** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:13 pm

stop laughing and compete with your eternal wisdom, lets see how you can get away with having a filesystem that takes no resources on the media.

PompeySteve · Post by **PompeySteve** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:39 pm

blackdroid wrote:stop laughing and compete with your eternal wisdom, lets see how you can get away with having a filesystem that takes no resources on the media.

I didn't say you could have a filesystem which takes up no resources, but to lose ~8% of your capacity shows either

a) an extremely inefficient filesystem
b) marketing BS to cover the fact that consumers are being short-changed

In fact, as I think about it, it has nothing to do with the filesystem - the "useable" capacity is lower than the quoted size of the disk BEFORE it has been formatted with any kind of filesystem. What precisely is being "managed" by the stick that required 40Mb of the 512Mb?

Do you also believe a 200Gb HD is a 200Gb HD with some space (10Gb) reserved for the filesystem?

Post by **pixel** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 8:40 pm

PompeySteve wrote:I didn't say you could have a filesystem which takes up no resources, but to lose ~8% of your capacity shows either

a) an extremely inefficient filesystem
b) marketing BS to cover the fact that consumers are being short-changed

In fact, as I think about it, it has nothing to do with the filesystem - the "useable" capacity is lower than the quoted size of the disk BEFORE it has been formatted with any kind of filesystem. What precisely is being "managed" by the stick that required 40Mb of the 512Mb?

Do you also believe a 200Gb HD is a 200Gb HD with some space (10Gb) reserved for the filesystem?

Could you stop the oddities here ? For your knowledge, an *efficient* filesystem as ext3fs would consume quite an amount of the disk space, after formatting. And 40Mb for 512Mb would be a good amount for a filesystem like the PS2's PFS thingy. If sony kept the same kind of filesystem for PSP, this isn't surprising at all. And I'm not even mentionning the "unit problem", as 1Kb = 1024 bytes and 1Mb = 1024 Kb when other people "display" 1Kb = 1000 bytes and 1Mb = 1000Kb.

Sorry, but I hate that kind of pointless "sony makes commercial bullshit" and technically wrong posts. If you don't know what you're talking about, no point of posting that kind of reply.

PompeySteve · Post by **PompeySteve** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:07 pm

Your point about ext3fs is taken, although I wouldn't expect any journaling on a filesystem used on a Memory Stick. By "efficient" I was referring more to diskspace overhead rather than performance.
EDIT: Nor would I expect a "reserved for root" (~5%) area on a Memory Stick

I'd just like to point out that I wasn't signling out Sony ("Sony et al") in my criticism and the fact remains that the useable capacity of a Memory Stick is significantly lower than the quoted size even before it has been formatted with a given filesystem. Or is this somehow 'pre-reserved' for any particular filesystem you might wish to do with the MS?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:14 pm

PompeySteve wrote: In fact, as I think about it, it has nothing to do with the filesystem - the "useable" capacity is lower than the quoted size of the disk BEFORE it has been formatted with any kind of filesystem. What precisely is being "managed" by the stick that required 40Mb of the 512Mb?

Do you also believe a 200Gb HD is a 200Gb HD with some space (10Gb) reserved for the filesystem?

1. Memory sticks come preformatted with a msdos FAT filesystem. FAT, like many filesystems, is more wasteful of space at higher capacities.
2. Reformatting the memory stick in the PSP or any other device cause it to be both formated (presumably still FAT) and adds a basic directory structure to be used by the device, hence the additional space used.

A 512MB memory stick and a 200GB hard drive are each what they are. Adding filesystems to either reduces the available space.

PompeySteve · Post by **PompeySteve** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:19 pm

gorim wrote:1. Memory sticks come preformatted with a msdos FAT filesystem. FAT, like many filesystems, is more wasteful of space at higher capacities.
2. Reformatting the memory stick in the PSP or any other device cause it to be both formated (presumably still FAT) and adds a basic directory structure to be used by the device, hence the additional space used.

A 512MB memory stick and a 200GB hard drive are each what they are. Adding filesystems to either reduces the available space.

Ok I hold my hands up - I didn't think MS were pre-formatted with a filesystem. I was under the impression that the "reserved for management" space that is quoted for MS was there regardless of whether it has been formatted with a filesystem or not. Presumably then, if you format a MS with a FAT with a larger cluster size, you'd lose less?

Come back Sony etc, all is forgiven ;)

F9zDark · Post by **F9zDark** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 6:10 pm

Yes, when you plug the USB cable to the PSP with a mem stick in, the removable media drive that comes up is FAT filesystem. But now the question begs to be asked, can another filesystem be formatted onto the media? With the USB connector installed, I believe it could be possible to format it with another filesystem.

Hmm... Maybe I should give it a go. Just hope my memory stick doesn't fry on me ;)

**ADDED**

Ok. Formatting with FAT32 failed because the cluster size was too big for the media. I suppose I need a bigger mem stick, say probably 1 gig. I am working with the 32mb that came with the PSP.

Smaller allocation units made the format start, but it would terminate at about 98% giving the error I mentioned above. Of course it could just be Window's crap formatting tools. If I had Partition Magic installed at the moment I'd try that, and my linux box got wiped to install win98. Ah classic gaming :)