MemoryStick Pro question

[rmcintosh]

I recently purchased a 512MB MSPro; however, in "media info" (and in OSX Finder when mounted from Mac), it indicates 468.1MB of total memory. Is this accurate? Is it right? ;) Does MagicGate technology take away space I thought I purchased? If so is there a way to get rid of MagicGate? Please advise. Cheers.

[Cyker]

Nope, that's how it is I'm afraid.

Call it false advertising...

I don't think the loss is down to MagicGate, unless the 512 is the actual chip and not it's capacity. But even if this is the case, there is no way to get that lost capacity back...

Part of it is down to to some 1024 vs 1000 sillyness, like you get with hard disk sizes, but there's still a chunk missing:
If you take the space of ~468MB and multiply it by 1024^2 to get it's value in bytes, you'll get ~490,000,000 *real* bytes.
We can assume Sony are measuring their MS' storage capacity using the same convention as hard disk manufacturers (i.e. using 1000 instead of 1024 to make it look bigger than it really is). From this we get 490MB, but that still leaves use 25MB short...

And to make things worse, if you put lots of small files on that MS you probably won't even reach half capacity before you can't fit anything else on there!
(By default it uses 32kB cluster blocks, so a 1 byte file will still take up 32kB!! :eek: )

I managed to boost the amount of stuff I can put on by reformatting my 512MB MS to use 8kB clusters instead. I was aiming for 4kB but you can't format these things to FAT32 or the Clie won't recognise them :(

This also means 2GB MS' will have 32kB clusters, and that no Sony product will be able to go above 2GB MS due to limitations of FAT16!!
I wonder if SD/MMC have these problems...

[FETT]

Right. My 256Mb MSPro Duo is really a 227.5Mb stick. :mad:

[rmcintosh]

Cyker, thanks for the info! Btw, if you get a chance to mention the steps to reformat using 8Kb cluster blocks, I'd appreciate it.

On a Lexar 256Mb (128Mbx2) MS, each "128Mb" bank has 123.5MB total free mem (x4=494Mb). If this is a fair comparison and other possibilities aside(?), it seems we're actually losing 26Mb (consistent with 25Mb you mentioned) to MagicGate.

[LeeD]

Almost as bad as back in the day when they sold "17" Monitors", that were really 15" screens. Fortunately, that's been fixed.

[rgps]

I think the limit for FAT is 4gig with a 2gig limit on a single file

From WindowsXP help "FAT:Volumes from floppy disk size up to 4 gigabytes (GB).
Does not support domains. Maximum file size is 2 GB."

[PCMaven]

Nope, that's how it is I'm afraid.

Call it false advertising...

I don't think the loss is down to MagicGate, unless the 512 is the actual chip and not it's capacity. But even if this is the case, there is no way to get that lost capacity back...

Part of it is down to to some 1024 vs 1000 sillyness, like you get with hard disk sizes, but there's still a chunk missing:
If you take the space of ~468MB and multiply it by 1024^2 to get it's value in bytes, you'll get ~490,000,000 *real* bytes.
We can assume Sony are measuring their MS' storage capacity using the same convention as hard disk manufacturers (i.e. using 1000 instead of 1024 to make it look bigger than it really is). From this we get 490MB, but that still leaves use 25MB short...

And to make things worse, if you put lots of small files on that MS you probably won't even reach half capacity before you can't fit anything else on there!
(By default it uses 32kB cluster blocks, so a 1 byte file will still take up 32kB!! :eek: )

I managed to boost the amount of stuff I can put on by reformatting my 512MB MS to use 8kB clusters instead. I was aiming for 4kB but you can't format these things to FAT32 or the Clie won't recognise them :(

This also means 2GB MS' will have 32kB clusters, and that no Sony product will be able to go above 2GB MS due to limitations of FAT16!!
I wonder if SD/MMC have these problems...
How much more space did you gain by reformatting? Also, how did you force the smaller clusters?

[rmcintosh]

Almost as bad as back in the day when they sold "17" Monitors", that were really 15" screens. Fortunately, that's been fixed.
Come to think of it, I was tricked too :eek:

[GeoffreyDC]

I used the Windows command-line format command. Type "format /?" to get the options. Just be sure NOT to do FAT32.

Geoffrey

[softech]

I think 4 Gig is the current limit of memory stick. I remember I read it from somewhere..

:)