16GB Toshiba Thumbdrive - format?

[dsonyay]

I bought a Toshiba 16gb thumbdrive today (10.86 at Sam's).  I'm running PCLOS 2012.  It's showing 14.4gb free.  Is that normal??

 Is there a way to format the thumbdrive so it gives me more space?  It is empty.  I checked for hidden files (with Dolphin) and there are none hidden. 

I know the sizes of these things is never exact, but how can I lose two gigs from the start?  I'm thinking it may be formated in in FAT32 or something ancient.  I seem to remember formating in NTFS yeilds more room, but I'm thinking I'd need to do this on a Windows platform... which I no longer use at home.

Any ideas?

thanks!

[muungwana]

1.024 * 1.024 GiB == 1 GB

14.4GiB * 1.024 * 1.024 = 15.09GB

I suspect the different you are seeing is that ,at one place, the size is reported in GB and in another place, the size is reported in GiB.

what does the following command give you when the drive is connected?

cat /proc/partitions

[pags]

Well, perhaps less about "reporting", and more about "marketing"
http://www.diskview.com/disk-size-discrepancy.htm

Drive manufacturers like to use powers of 10, (1000*1000), instead of powers of 2 (1024*1024), because it makes the drives "bigger"

16 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 16,000,000,000
16,000,000,000 / (1024 * 1024 * 1024) = 14.90

 

[dsonyay]

This is what I get:

[ds@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

   8        0   78150744 sda
   8        1    8185086 sda1
   8        2          1 sda2
   8        5    4088511 sda5
   8        6   65874501 sda6
   8       16   15148608 sdb
   8       17   15148192 sdb1

I have gParted and it show format in FAT32, Size 14.42 GiB, Used 14.4 MiB, Unused 14.43 GiB.

Guess that's about all I can do.  Thanks... 14.4 is OK,  I only went in for an 8 gig that was on sale for 7.95 and left with a 16 for just under 11 bucks.

Thanks all.

[muungwana]

you gotta love marketing sometimes

8GB   -> $$$7.95
16GB -> $$$11

They increase the storage by 100% but increase the price by 38%.

It seem logical to go for the higher capacity one but i think they got you fooled,this is how they get all of us fooled like when they sell 1000 different types of toothpaste of slightly different prices, the other one was there intentionally to make you buy the more expensive one and feel good about your purchase. Capitalism at its best 

[dsonyay]

Actually if I bought the 8GB usb it would have had about 7.2 GB (at $7.95)
The 16 gb (14.4gb) was 10.86

Had I bought two 8GB (7.2 GB cap each) usbs, I'd have paid nearly $16.00 for a total of 14.4GB capacity.

I paid 10.86 for one 16 GB usb (w/14.4 GB cap), so I think I got more for my money that way.... or am I missing something?

[Xenaflux]

I took my wife's 16Gb Kingston stick- fresh out of the packet.
free space: 14.3 Gb

I took my Sandisk 16 Gb
free space : 14.2 Gb

Xx

[muungwana]

you are thinking logically, based on options that were presented to you.

what you are missing is that, the prices and feature set were setup specifically to compel you to go for the one sold at a higher price if you only wanted to buy one of them.

walmart works the same way,some items are below market value and are placed at the beginning of the section and somewhere deep into the section, items are at and at time above market prices.

Some items are sold at a loss but are on the self not to be sold, but to compel shoppers to go for the more expensive alternative of the same brand.All they do is add more features to the one with cheaper price and then increase the price marginally in a such a way to make it seem like going for a more expensive one is a bargain.This is what happen with the price points you showed.

Its clever marketing,was just pointing that out.

Keep this in mind when you go to buy toothpaste,or toothbrush or toilet paper or paper napkin or a soap or cereal or anything where you see an unnecessarily large number of alternatives from the same company and each only differ slightly in price

[dsonyay]

you are thinking logically, based on options that were presented to you.

what you are missing is that, the prices and feature set were setup specifically to compel you to go for the one sold at a higher price if you only wanted to buy one of them....

...Its clever marketing,was just pointing that out.

Keep this in mind when you go to buy toothpaste,or toothbrush or toilet paper or paper napkin or a soap or cereal or anything where you see an unnecessarily large number of alternatives from the same company and each only differ slightly in price

Ah, Ok, yeah I was misreading your reply a bit.  I know exactly what you mean.. and yes, capitalism is great

take care,

[Just17]

Don't blame all the missing space on the hardware manufacturer.

When you format a partition there is a considerable 'overhead'.

fdisk -l

should tell you what actual size the whole drive is.