New 8gb Fuze - Only 7.16gb Available?

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

I just got a new 8gb Fuze and it’s now showing only 7.16gb available.  Here’s what I have done: 

I fully charged the battery. I then started the Fuze, confirmed the firmware version (v2.xx), confirmed it showed the battery fully charged. I then updated the firmware using the updater and confirmed the new/current version showed in the info.  I then reformated the Fuze via System Settings>Format to make sure the 8K database limit is effected.

When I connected to start loading music it showed the drive only had 7.16gb available. I disconnected and reformatted again. Same result.

When connected to the computer (MSC) the properties info for the drive shows:

Capacity 7,914 million bytes, 7.37GB available

Used Space 220 million bytes, 210MB used

Free space 7,694 bytes, 7.16 GB available.

Under System Settings>Info it reads:

Memory 7549 MB

Free 7337 MB

I understand that drives never fully match capacity and the firmware takes some space, but losing almost a full Gb of usable space doesn’t seem right. If I recall, my previous 8gb Fuze had 7.5-7.6gb free.

Any thoughts/suggestions? Should I return it and get a replacement?  Thanks. 

2

Remember that the firmware is on there. That takes up some space. You could try formatting with windows and then reformatting with the system settings. 

3

CB - If I format in Windows that’ll wipe the firmware, correct? Am I correct that a manual install of the firmware will work after the Windows format? Just drag/drop the downloaded files to the wiped clean drive? Would this jeopardize/void my warranty?

More generally, before I do that I’d like to know whether this much memory loss is customary or if it’s unusual. As I read the info (see OP) the firmware only uses about 220MB, yet the usable drive space is reduced by an additional +/-700MB beyond that. Seems excessive to me, even acknowledging that drives are never fully usable…

4

@robisan wrote:

CB - If I format in Windows that’ll wipe the firmware, correct? Am I correct that a manual install of the firmware will work after the Windows format? Just drag/drop the downloaded files to the wiped clean drive? Would this jeopardize/void my warranty?

 

More generally, before I do that I’d like to know whether this much memory loss is customary or if it’s unusual. As I read the info (see OP) the firmware only uses about 220MB, yet the usable drive space is reduced by an additional +/-700MB beyond that. Seems excessive to me, even acknowledging that drives are never fully usable…

No… There is a partition(not what they call it) that protects the firmware. You wont have to reload the firmware. The more I think about it try this first, Put it in MSC mode and Run the Chkdsk utility, you may have some corrupted memory and that might help. If you format in windows and you are still missing that much call sandisk and get the exact numbers. As to what they expect.

5

8 gigabytes aren’t really 8 gigabytes because of the difference between binary and decimal.

Wikipedia has a thorough explanation.

An excerpt:

Although most manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devices define 1 gigabyte as 1000000000bytes, the computer operating systems used by most users usually calculate size in gigabytes by dividing the total capacity in bytes (whether it is disk capacity, file size, or system RAM) by 1073741824. This distinction can be a cause of confusion, as a hard disk with a manufacturer-rated capacity of 400 gigabytes may be reported by the operating system as only 372 GB large, depending on the type of report.

So 8GB would be 7.44 as reported by your computer. Take away the 220MB for the firmware and… 

Formatting won’t touch the firmware–it only removes content added by the user.  But I don’t think it will yield much.

6

Thanks, that corresponds exactly with the numbers I reported in the OP. I knew the actual/usable size is always reported as smaller by the operating system but my layman’s take was this example looked excessive. Oh well…