Sd Formating

[crasherball]

no, thats not what I'm talking about:
windows really showed me that 5gb of the disc was taken...
just as if I had a dvd on it or something....
except for it was absolutly empty

It said that there was 5GB used, or 55GB free? If the later, then it's already been explained above - A 60GB drive contains ~55GB of space.


5gb was used.
i was shown the total size of the drive (it was i think about 58 gb or so)
and I was told that about 4-5gb of the drive was actually being used
as if there were already some content on it

 

[WizardStan]

That doesn't sound like a feature of any filesystem I've seen. Even if there was overhead from the FS, it wouldn't list that as used space, it just wouldn't list it at all. Stupid question, but have you done a complete listing? ls -la? There may have been a hidden directory created and filled with something. Can't imagine how, when, or why though. It seems quite bizarre.

 

[Squidge]

listing? ls -la? There may have been a hidden directory created and filled with something. Can't imagine how,

He's running Windows don't forget

Try opening a dosbox and typing 'dir c:\ /ah' and posting the results.

 

[crasherball]

ya, that quite seems very strange....

i gotta say: i wasnt able to mount the device under linux propperly...
gparted just wasnt going to list the device...

so i formated it under windows with paragon partition manager....

maybe it was kinda flawed....

 

[WizardStan]

You can format ext3 in Windows? :blink:

 

[TaG]

Whenever I have created ext3 partitions under linux it has shown some of the partition as used - but not 10% / 5gb. I assumed it was for the file structure - I'm not sure of the correct term but a little like the FAT table.

 

[Tom`]

Whenever I have created ext3 partitions under linux it has shown some of the partition as used - but not 10% / 5gb. I assumed it was for the file structure - I'm not sure of the correct term but a little like the FAT table.

For ext3, the journal.

 

[Karel Jansens]

BEWARE the same is NOT true of micro-MMC/SD. My mother has a phone with a microSD slot. I was in every shop in her local area of Spain looking for a MicroSD card for it and nothing turned up. Eventually I found a 512Mb Micro-MMC card so purchased it and it did not fit the phone.

True tale.

Well... yes, obviously. Mini-MMC (not "micro") and Micro-SD are not pin-compatible. They even require different adapters to use them in SD slots.

 

[sindbad]

RS-MMC (reduced size) is the correct term. It isn't compatible with either one of miniSD or microSD.

 

[TaG]

Whenever I have created ext3 partitions under linux it has shown some of the partition as used - but not 10% / 5gb. I assumed it was for the file structure - I'm not sure of the correct term but a little like the FAT table.

For ext3, the journal.

That's it - thanks. Now you've reminded me it has come back.
(Just a wee while away from linux and I'm forgetting stuff. Must see if I can figure out how to dual boot with Vista.)

 

[Pleng]

BEWARE the same is NOT true of micro-MMC/SD. My mother has a phone with a microSD slot. I was in every shop in her local area of Spain looking for a MicroSD card for it and nothing turned up. Eventually I found a 512Mb Micro-MMC card so purchased it and it did not fit the phone.

True tale.

Well... yes, obviously. Mini-MMC (not "micro") and Micro-SD are not pin-compatible. They even require different adapters to use them in SD slots.


Eh I was not talking about Mini-MMC. I would have expected that to be compatible with Mini-SD.

The one I bouth was called 'Micro-MMC'. It was from Transdisk, and it was the same size (though on closer examination, a slightly different shape) as a Micro-SD.

Why it should be 'obvious' that Mini and Micro MMCs aren't compatible with Mini and Micro SD slots, whem MMC cards are compatible with SD slots is beyond me.

(edit) fixed formatting issues

 

[Karel Jansens]

RS-MMC (reduced size) is the correct term. It isn't compatible with either one of miniSD or microSD.

Thanks for the correction. My only RS-MMC sits inside my Nokia 770 and I couldn't be bothered to get up and read.

It is true however that all these cards (albeit with the correct adapters) will function in a regular SD slot.

Why it should be 'obvious' that Mini and Micro MMCs aren't compatible with Mini and Micro SD slots, whem MMC cards are compatible with SD slots is beyond me.

(edit) fixed formatting issues

Because MMC is basically physically and internally identical to SD. MMC was here first, then someone thought it would be a good idea (may they burn in hell!) to add DRM to it and SD was born.

All those mini, micro and whatnot formats are basically proprietary hacks for consumer lock-in. The only true universal small card format is MMC/SD (not counting Compact Flash for the moment, because it's bigger), and even there you have to watch out for HC compatibility.

All this shows is that the Pandora developers made the right choice to go for SDHC slots. We should consider ourselves lucky: Nokia went from RS-MMC (770) to SDHC (N800) to micro-SD (N810). How's that for format hell?

 

[Chairman_Now]

5gb was used.
i was shown the total size of the drive (it was i think about 58 gb or so)
and I was told that about 4-5gb of the drive was actually being used
as if there were already some content on it

EXT3 reserves some space, and that's what you're seeing.

You can get the space back:

http://boncey.org/2006_11_18_reclaiming_ext3_disk_space