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carandall

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 25, 2006
1
0
My 6gb ipod mini can only fit 5.67Gb worth of songs on. Is this because the rest is taken up with the software or is there a way to get at the missing memory?
 

SpookTheHamster

macrumors 65816
Nov 7, 2004
1,495
8
London
It's because manufacturers mix up gigabytes (1,000MB = 1GB) and gibibytes (1,024MiB = 1GiB).

The terms kilo, mega, etc mean 1,000, 1,000,000 etc. So a megabyte is equal to 1,000 kilobytes, which is 1,000 bytes.

A gibibyte is 1024 mebibytes, which is 1024 kibibytes and so on.

Your iPod Mini has 6GB of storage, which is less than 6GiB. Obviously, some will be taken up by the iPod software, but not much.
 

Zeeshan

macrumors newbie
Mar 17, 2006
5
0
Southern California
Just like when you're computers hard drive is smaller than what is advertised, when the iPods hard drive is formatted to be used, it loses some space. It's normal.
 

patrick0brien

macrumors 68040
Oct 24, 2002
3,246
9
The West Loop
I feel I need to add an answer to SpookTheHamster's post as I work for the said manufacturer of carandall's mini's drive.

I issue is the education of the consumer. It has been seen that the average consumer will not bother (note I said 'will not', not cannot) to learn that a megabyte is indeed 1024k, and not 1000. So it is easier to market by effectivey rounding off that 1024 to 1000, so the computer, being literal will show the actual 1024(k)x1024(mb)x1024(gb), being smaller than advertised. It's not really being dishonest, just allowing for the slop in definition that happened in industry by de-facto.

It's a marketing/education/properllerhead thing. And I know the folks around here would prefer to say it right, the problem is "everybody is doing it".

Remember the screen measurements of CRTs? That was TRUE dishonesty. <-(did I just make a funny?)
 
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