1GB shuffle truly = 1 Gig? or is it less?

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
Hey all,

you know how the "6GB iPod Mini" only actually has 5.7GB available, well does the same apply to the iPod Shuffles? Do they actually have less than 1GB or 512MB of space?

thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Of course it does. The actual formatted capacity is always less.



    1,000,000,000 bytes or 10*9 (to the power of 9) bytes is the definition used by telecommunications engineers and some storage manufacturers.



    1,073,741,824 bytes, equal to 1024*3, or 2*30. This is the definition most often used in computer engineering, computer science, computer programming, and almost all computer operating systems.





    seeing as Shuffle uses storage.. by said manufacturers, the first definition, 10*9 is used, therefore, the actual formatted capacity is less.



    edit: in order to learn the formatted capacity of any drive, use this formula: y * 10^8 / 2^30, where Y = size of drive in metric gigabytes (for example, a 10 GB drive when formatted is 9.3 GB).
  • Reply 2 of 11
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    "Formatted capacity" is 9.3 GB or, if you want to get more technical, is actually 9.3 GiB (Gibibytes).



    1 GB = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) bytes.
  • Reply 3 of 11
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Luca

    "Formatted capacity" is 9.3 GB or, if you want to get more technical, is actually 9.3 GiB (Gibibytes).



    1 GB = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) bytes.




    WRONG!



    1GB==1,024MB 1MB==1,024KB 1KB==1,024Bytes



    1GB is 1,073,741,824 bytes



    Formatting, at least in my experiance is not an issue with flash cards, which is what the shuffle is. As with any mass-produced product, there is a certin alowable margin of error, with a gig, that is probably a few megs either way, you could get, lets say a 988MB shuffle or a 1,043 MB shuffle and it would still technically be a 1 gig, allowing for margin of error
  • Reply 4 of 11
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    oops dbl post
  • Reply 5 of 11
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Er, a_greer, you're wrong.



    G = 10^9



    Gi = 2^30 (what you gave above)



    Those are the definitions. I can provide many *many* sources and links if you would like, but you're using an old convention that is falling by the wayside.



    CompSci has traditionally used G for 2^30, until someone realized that's *really really stupid*, since it breaks with every other scientific and engineering system out there. Hence the new prefix, Gi (and Mi, ki, Ti, etc) for Giga-binary. Gibi-, Mebi-, kibi-, Tebi-, etc The binary forms are pronounced like the first half of the base 10 version, appended with '-bee', so it's Gih-bee, Meh-bee, kih-bee, Teh-bee and so on.



    Drive manufacturers use the decimal style (as made obvious by the G prefix). The Finder uses the Gi calculations, but the G style to report... so it's wrong. I'd like to see this fixed, to be honest, because it's really quite stupid.



    Now what's this mean? Well, the capacity in the Shuffle is indeed 1GB... but .95GiB or so, which is what you'll see in the Finder, but as .95GB. (Bzzt.) Then, you have the overhead of the volume structure, etc, and it's closer to .92GiB, and people think they're getting ripped off. They're not, the capacity *is* 1GB, and the formatted capability *is* .92GiB, and nothing screwy is going on, except for the Finder using the wrong prefix, and people not knowing the difference.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    It's worth mentioning that the Shuffle being Flash memory is actually binary based, ie it's 1 Gibibyte (2^30). That said the software to operate it takes up some space so you end up with slightly less.



    As an aside I still find it ridiculous that the major OS vendors have failed to adopt the standards for nomenclature on this.



    Edit: Sitting here looking at my Shuffle it reports as 990.5 MiB of available capacity or 1.039 x 10^9 bytes.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    of course... its prolly from the folder and what not they have on thoiguhs ipods... games, ect... the 20GB arent exactly 20... same same on same on.... so tehy would do the same for the shuffle
  • Reply 8 of 11
    spiers69spiers69 Posts: 418member
    ok well thank you. The answer was much more technical than what i wanted, but i got it in the end.

    Thanks
  • Reply 9 of 11
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    CompSci has traditionally used G for 2^30, until someone realized that's *really really stupid*, since it breaks with every other scientific and engineering system out there. Hence the new prefix, Gi (and Mi, ki, Ti, etc) for Giga-binary. Gibi-, Mebi-, kibi-, Tebi-, etc The binary forms are pronounced like the first half of the base 10 version, appended with '-bee', so it's Gih-bee, Meh-bee, kih-bee, Teh-bee and so on.



    This has fascinated me, are you saying our former GB, now GiB, is (should) be pronounced Geh-bee? Or am I getting confused with what you are saying?
  • Reply 10 of 11
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Around 1990 the IEC made an effort to correct the blunder that was computer prefixes. Basically what had been done is they'd taken the closest SI prefix for use of binary numbers so 2^10 used kilo, 2^20 was mega, 2^30 giga and so on and so forth. However there are two problems with this. First the definitions for kilo, mega, giga, etc are standards and defined as 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, etc. Second, storage and bandwidth companies have no need to connect themselves with binary numbers so in many cases have adhered to the proper SI definitions, which only caused people confusion.



    So around 1990 the IEC introduced a set of binary prefixes that has also been adopted by SI. Basically it takes the existing prefix, removes the last 2 letters and replaces them with bi, short for binary. So kilo becomes kibi, mega becomes mebi, etc.
  • Reply 11 of 11
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by danielctull

    This has fascinated me, are you saying our former GB, now GiB, is (should) be pronounced Geh-bee? Or am I getting confused with what you are saying?



    Sometimes yes, Sometimes no. You really need to know which numeric base the raw number refers to to know which version to use. External storage is still using the old fashioned numbers because they are computing raw capacity in base 10. RAM capacities on the other hand should be referred by the newer convention because the capacity is defined in binary magnitudes.



    It will take years to get straight if it ever does.
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