Why my 16GB USB showing only 14.9GB....??

Hey Readers.....!! Today I gotta new mail from one of the visitors, and that query seems was very sensible and reasonable also, and her query is 

"I Brought a new 16 gb sony pen drive and its showing me 14.9gb, and i donno why sony has done this to me, shall i exchange or will it happens with everyone, please reply me"

Most of you will be having the same question in mind, but many of you wont find time to know this, so today i wanna make it very clear here by explaining the reason behind it,

Before that, i'll tell you what many people think,
1) for successful working of the pendrive, it need some system files, so system files will be dumped into it :(,
2) Predefined files will be allocated in that memory :],
3) pendrives should be given only 98% of space for usage, if not done so then they hang and furthur reading and writing operations wont be functioned ;),
4) Pendrive manufacturers has made a deal in between them to give only 98% space for user availability :P,

So if you people think like above, then right now my target is to make you mature before complete reading of this post :)
Actually When someone ask you how much MB does 1GB comprises, within 10secs you will be reply 1024....1024, in between individuals the response time may vary but everyone will be giving same answer 1024 with a energetic pitch level.

But you know what happens in case of manufacturer, when the same question is placed in front of a vendor, the answer varies, and you will be getting 1000 in response, and now you just calculate how much your pendrive is allocated,

So now Ms.Angelica for you i'll calculate the capacity of your 16GB here, and you check it whether you are getting 14.7GB or not,

1KB=1000B, 1MB=1000KB, 1GB=1000MB

So as per vendor calculation, 16GB= 16*1000MB=16*1000*1000KB=16*1000*1000*1000B

Now our calculation, 16GB= 16*1024MB=16*1024*1024KB=16*1024*1024*1024B

So the vendor is providing your 16GB USB with (16*1000*1000*1000)/(1024*1024*1024)=14.9GB

Thats it.... so in simple words,

The metric prefixes are power of 10, 1000 or 10^3 is k, 10^6 is M, 10^9 G...
The binary prefixes are power of 2 ( 2^10 = 1024 not so far from 1000 but different, 2.4%).

And you can apply the same formula for your HDD, SSD, SD cards, etc.
So by now many of you got maturity in this case, Cheers
If you want your friends also to be mature share with them...


About the Author

Hi! I am Ajay Kumar Kalva, Currently serving as the CEO of this site, a tech geek by passion, and a chemical process engineer by profession, i'm interested in writing articles regarding technology, hacking and pharma technology.
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