Jujubee

Hi uhh, I don't really know where to begin or how to explain this. I made a topic about it last night then deleted it after I thought I figured out what was wrong. Long story short, my 256MB stick had a capacity of 256MB when I bought it. After I transfered some files over to it, the capacity went down to 235MB. I tried formating the stick and its still 235MB, as if something is either stuck on it, or its damaged. I'd expect this from a HDD but not a memory stick. Most HDDs don't have the actual capacity they advertise, but my memory stick did at first. Somehow, I lost 21MB, thats 12% of 256MB and I'd like it back. Simularly, the capacity of my 32MB stick went down to 30.9MB, a near 14% loss. Does anyone know what could be causing this? Am I the only one with this problem? I think I might call Sony Tech Support, or take the memory stick back and exchange it.

Singularity

That's the proper size for those sticks. Memory stick companies don't use 1024 kilobytes as a megabyte. They instead use 1000 kilobytes. So, 256 x 1000 / 1024 = 250 MB, then some room is lost to formatting and indexing, as well as magicgate protection. Therefore, you get:

30.1-30.9 MB for a 32 MB Stick,
60-61 MB for a 64 MB Stick,
115 MB for a 128 MB Stick
235 MB for a 256 MB Stick,
464 MB for a 512 MB Stick,
950-960 MB for a 1024 MB (1 Gigabyte) Stick

It's all in the formatting.

Jujubee

Wow, thanks alot 3ncryption. I was hoping it would be something like that bacause I was a little worried it could happen again. What a relief it wasn't caused by something I did.