Loosing capacity after formatting memory card

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Matthames

Über Member
Location
East Sussex
I use Linux in the guise of the Ubuntu distribution. I have been having a bit of trouble recently where my camera would cut out randomly, so I am experimenting with reformatting the memory card to see if it would cure the problem. However, when reformatting it I seem to loose about 500Mb of capacity out of an 8Gb card. I am wondering if there is a way of clawing back that lost memory.
 

Carwash

Señor Member
Location
Visby
Have you tried formatting it using the camera?
 
I use Linux in the guise of the Ubuntu distribution. I have been having a bit of trouble recently where my camera would cut out randomly, so I am experimenting with reformatting the memory card to see if it would cure the problem. However, when reformatting it I seem to loose about 500Mb of capacity out of an 8Gb card. I am wondering if there is a way of clawing back that lost memory.

Is this not perhaps the using binary vs using decimal thing?

From Wikipedia:

The term "megabyte" is commonly used to mean either 10002 bytes or 10242 bytes. This originated as compromise technical jargon for the byte multiples that needed to be expressed by the powers of 2 but lacked a convenient name. As 1024 (210) approximates 1000 (103), roughly corresponding SI multiples began to be used for binary multiples. By the end of 2007, standards and government authorities including IEC, IEEE, EU, and NIST proposed standards for binary prefixes and requiring the use of megabyte to strictly denote 10002 bytes and mebibyte to denote 10242 bytes. This is reflected in an increasing number of software projects using the new definitions, but some file managers still show file sizes using the binary interpretation (10242 bytes). The term remains ambiguous and it can follow any one of the following common definitions:



1. 1000000 bytes (10002, 106): This is the definition recommended by the International System of Units (SI) and the International Electrotechnical Commission IEC.[3] This definition is used in networking contexts and most storage media, particularly hard drives, Flash-based storage[4], and DVDs, and is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefix in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance. The Mac OS X 10.6 file manager is a notable example of this usage in software. Since Snow Leopard, file sizes are reported in decimal units.[5]

2. 1048576 bytes (10242, 220): This definition is most commonly used in reference to computer memory, but most software that display file size or drive capacity, including file managers also use this definition. See Consumer confusion (in the "gigabyte" article). The Microsoft Windows file manager is a notable example of this usage in software.

3. 1024000 bytes (1000×1024): This is used to describe the formatted capacity of the "1.44 MB" 3.5 inch HD floppy disk, which actually has a capacity of 1474560 bytes.
 
Not to forget the fact that formatting any media uses some space to hold the formatting\media information, such as what space is used and which parts of the space are actually in use and by what. A master index if you will.

What filesystem are you formatting the card with? and what was the storage size of the card, pre-formatting? (ah, you did say, 8gb)

My 8gb card once formatted actually has aformatted capacity of 7.42gb (reported from Windows) - so all sounds fine.
 
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