Amazing, when it says “Some capacity not available for data storage.” I seriously didn’t expect that it would be 1.1Gb of space! what a rip off… a 16Gb USB that actually only holds 14.9Gb Last time I’ll be buying a Sandisk Product that’s for sure
Sounds like someone reformatted their USB drive to NTFS.
16Gbytes formated into sectors and clusters to meet pc standards loose access to the space between the clusters. Works the same with hard drives also.
Nods* It’s like Windows thinks it’s 1MB = 1024 bytes but the BIOS or hardware thinks its 1MB = 1000bytes. So we won’t be able to use the quoted 16 GB.
Or it could be the other way around.
Why jump to the conclusion they reformatted the drive? I’m reading this forum right now because I was trying to figure out why my brand new, just bought, stuck in the socket for the first time Cruzer Switch 16GB has only 14.9GB of storage, a similar capacity loss to the person who started this discussion. And nowhere on the packaging does it indicate that actual capacity may be less than the big red 16Gb shown on the front of the pack and on the shelf at the store. This product should actually show 15Gb on the pack. Claiming specifications higher than actuality without a clear disclaimer is illegal under Australian consumer law and I’m considering whether to simply return the USB stick to the retailer or report it to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Update: I did some more research and found most companies misrepresent 1 Mb as 1000 instead of 1024. So it’s off to the ACCC, I guess.
Actually there are two concepts in play, one is the 1000 / 1024 concept, the other is the one that the machine format of the drive has no overhead. Whether it’s for a pc or a Mac a drive has to be formated to be read or written to by the operating system. There are bytes used by the MBR, the partition table, between clusters for alignment. So a 1,000,000 byte device will not result in 1,000,000 bytes of pc data files.
Your 14.9Gb of storage capability on a device with 16Gb magnetic bytes is normal for use in a pc.
Let us know how much usable space you find on flash drives made in Australia.
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That is how USB or disk drives in general work. If you would check BIOS and check that USB, it would show 16GB. In any brand that you will check, that will always stay the same.
