The usb port on my mp3 modulator has decided to become dodgy so got myself a SD card. Now I thought I’d be a smart **** and got a 2Gb card so I could put even more music on it.
The question / quandary is both the SD card and the USB stick have the same tracks loaded on them, both are formatted with FAT32 system. Yet the 1Gb USB stick says it has 796mb used space and the 2Gb SD card says it has 1.76Gb used space. If they both have the same data how is it that it takes up more room on one? I thought 2Gb was 2Gb no matter what not well it’s 2Gb if you store this type of file but only 1Gb if you store that type.
2006-08-10 11:08:14 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
may have something to do with cluster allocation. NTFS manages a number of clusters (grouped sectors, each sector is 512kb). The exact number of clusters varies from disk subsystem to disk subsystem. The proble is this, if your cluster size is 16 sectors for example (16x512kb=8.192mb) and you write a 1kb file to that cluster, you cannot write any additional information into that space, the cluster is now allocated and the next clust has to be used to store a different file. You can add to the 1kb file but you cannot write a new file into the space. The problem you may have is as follows : if both cards have 100 clusters, the 1gb card could hold 100 10mb files, however the 2gb card could hold 100 20mb files, so 70 3mb files would occupy 700mb on the 1mb card and 1.4gb on the 2gb card. Sounds weird but it is how it work. The only other issu could be bad sectors (unwritable ares) on your 2gb card, this could consume lots of spare capacity.
2006-08-10 22:15:05 · answer #1 · answered by jarrajackie 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋