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Formatting & Deleting Flash Drives - HELP


basstracks

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Don't yell at me please, I'm new.  The most I know about coding is html, after viewing a lot of posts around here, mostly in the hacking sections, I am way out of my league, so you guys should be able to tell me the deal on this.

I have a SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro 1GB (the properties show it as this), I had it for a while now, when I first got it I knew nothing about the U3 stuff, and did not care for it so I somehow, do not remember, reformatted the drive and got rid of everything including the hidden partition, at least I think.  (It does not show up anywhere, using many types of progs. )

What I want to know is, since it's 1 GB, why does the drive properties show me that only 977 MB are free and 4. 00 kb as used space? - Why can't I regain that extra 23 MB of space? - What is taking up that space and why can't I, or how do I get it back? It is currently partitioned at FAT32.

Also I have a SanDisk Cruzer Mini 128 MB (the properties show it as this), wiped that one out as well after I bought it, and that one shows up as having 117 MB free with 0 bytes as used space.  This for some reason will only partition as FAT16.

So where is the extra space on both of them, why is the mini only partitioning as FAT16, even though it had the U3 software on it as well, and in the properties, why does it show up as "SanDisk U3" for the Micro 1 GB device?

My guess at least this far is that I did not get rid of the hidden partition.

???

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The only thing I can say is that, Every File system takes up space and there are Two Different ways of giving how much space there is available. The People making the disk count in bits (i think) where as we use bytes (again, I think). So it is a bit smaller that Advertised.

P.S. I cannot remember the names of the Different types of Counting Space, If I am wrong please correct me.

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You are actually missing 47MB of space because 1GB is 1024MB not 1000MB. You are 'missing' this because drive manufacturers tend to market them as having 1000MB per GB  there by making them seem slightly larger. The only reason you are missing the 23MB of the 1000MB you should have is because...

1000MB = 1000000000B

1000000000 / 1024 = 976562.5KB

976562.5 / 1024 = 953.673828125MB

You'v been given more space then they actually advertised, be grateful ;)

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Thats wierd considering that I have another flash drive, which is a Lexar Jump Drive 250 MB, that shows 249 MB of free space. But like was stated earlier, it depends on the manufacturer. I used a partition table editor and wiped everything just out of curiosity, still the same afterwards. Like was stated ...

Thanks.

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Well I think the space you can't delete is for loading the drivers. I guess the manufacture company must protect that part of the usb to load on a computer once it's connected. I could be wrong but that's what I think.

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