MS Memory Disappearance

[Cernunnos]

This is something that has mystified me for awhile. I bought a 128 MS. The memory stick is almost full. The thing that is mystifying me is that the items I see as deletable options in the delete menu don't add up to 128. I subsequently realized that (duh, I suppose) that my individual files were also taking up space that wouldn't be seen in the delete menu. I have cleaned up the useless files, tallied them for the total memory space expended and am still falling short of the 128 MB. If anyone has any insight as to what may be tieing up the excess I would appreciate their opinions.

:eek:

[n2ifp]

First of all you would only have 123mb available due to the way megabytes are referenced. Also small files, maybe a few bytes will take up 16KB as that is the smallest cluster size allowed. So a bunch of little files can chew memory up pretty quickly. I think it's 16KB clusters, maybe more, maybe less, I would have to look up one of the charts to verify it.

This is standard FAT on all drives or memory cards. The larger the drive, the bigger the clusters after reaching certain threshold points. FAT32 and NTFS file systems change the rules a bit and handle files a little more efficiently on larger drives.

FAT= File Allocation Table

So the smallest of files will take up a minimum of 16KB, if it runs slightly over that, then it will be 32KB, even if the file is only 17KB in size.

BTW, on a drive, one megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes.