Real capacity of MP3 players

[TechOutsider]

Should this be a sticky? I find it annoying when something is rated at more than its actual capacity. Especially when its a lot. My iPod classic is rated at 80 GB, however it only has 74 GB free out of the box.

My question is: How much free space is there on the Sansa Fuze out of the box?

[CrowdAds]

[Detroit]

They read 1 GB as 1000 MB when the device reads 1 GB as 1024 MB. So just do the math to find out.

[JK98]

There is also space used up by the firmware, the song database, other system files on the player, and the sample songs, videos, and photos that come with the player.

[sumx4182]

Search. Has been discussed numerous numerous times. This is about the time is usually quote the quote of the quote of my quote from the original thread this was mentioned...but I don't feel like it. lol

[copeys]

Sumx, couldn't find your post, so I got ZC's good explanation:

Originally Posted by ZenChick

Let me see if I can clear up this confusion here...

Hard drives capacities are typically given in decimal bytes, meaning 1GB=1000MB=1,000,000,000 Bytes. This has been a point of contention for a long time, since memory within a digital computer system is always accessed in binary units, not decimal, so expressing capacity in decimal units is deceptive marketing.

Physical memory, on the other hand, is always packaged and marketed in terms of binary capacity, and is one of the reasons why you often see memory sold in odd capacities (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 ... 512, 1024, etc). Unless a manufacturer is engaging in the same deceptive marketing practice considered normal among hard drive manufacturers, a 2GB flash-based player will have 2GiB, or 2048MiB of storage.

The reason you cannot actually use all 2048MiB of storage space is because of what's known as filesystem overhead, which affects any type of memory formatted for use as file storage. As is nearly always the case with MSC players (and MTP/MSC hybrids and MTP players capable of exposing all or part of its filesystem to the host computer), the storage area is formatted using FAT16 or FAT32. Just like the name suggests, FAT works by setting aside a block of space for the File Allocation Table (essentially, a map of the entire storage area). The higher the capacity, the larger the table. The 59MB that appears to be missing from your 1GiB player is most likely this file allocation table.

FAT16/32 also has additional overhead that won't be immediately visible when you query the device's free space, but still has to be considered. In order to make FAT work on large-capacity media, the sector sizes have to be large - generally set at 32k blocks. A block cannot have more than one file in it; if a file (or part of a large file) does not completely fill a 32k block, the unused space is wasted. This waste adds up very quickly with small files, and can still have a notable effect even with typical music file sizes. Lastly, for every file saved to the storage area, FAT allocates extra space for metadata -- basically, scratchpad space where the host OS can store notes about the file, such as creation and modification dates, access dates, file attributes, and so on. This metadata area is not to be confused with metadata that is contained within a media file, such as ID3 data, as this metadata is contained within the file itself.

Hopefully this helps explain the reason why "actual formatted capacity [is] less".

[sumx4182]

ah, i did a search too, the search archives must have been cleared out or something cause I think it was from at least 6 or 8 months ago. It's been awhile.

[copeys]

Originally Posted by sumx4182

ah, i did a search too, the search archives must have been cleared out or something cause I think it was from at least 6 or 8 months ago. It's been awhile.

Yeah. I tried google and couldn't find anything.

Must have been a pretty big clear out .
Or (more likely) my dogdy search skills couldn't find anything! lol

[gcogger]

Originally Posted by Detroit

They read 1 GB as 1000 MB when the device reads 1 GB as 1024 MB. So just do the math to find out.

It's even worse than that. The device regards 1GB as 1024x1024x1024 bytes. The marketing BS regards it as 1,000,000,000 bytes. So according to the marketing, 80GB can be claimed when it's really 74.5GB.

[dfkt]

"Consumer confusion", they couldn't have named the chapter better on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_...umer_confusion

[Dreamnine]

I know my 16GB Sony only has 14.6GB after deleting the stock files.

[copeys]

I think the manufacturers should specify a GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Nothing else

[TechOutsider]

An 8 GB iPod has 7.4 GB free, while an 80 GB has 74.xx GB free. Seems to be proportional.

[The DarkSide]

Didn't Creative lose a class action lawsuit over this recently? I never decided to collect any money they owed (supposedly) to all of us they scammed (supposedly). The thing is, 99% of all companies are "lairs" then, correct?

[FreeZ5]

My Dad used to say that salemen will say anything except their prayers. Marketing departments will say anything that makes their product sound good. As alway "buyer beware".

Steve

[sumx4182]

it's just a thing that they don't think the majority of consumers know the difference between a gibibyte and a gigabyte and so they report it in what they think the user will understand the most. Alot of places will now say on the box, 1megabytes = .9537 mebibytes...or something like that to indicate that they are not equal.