Q: I just bought a Lexar 8 GB Secure II Plus jump drive and in the the package says 8 gigs but the properties of it says LESS then 7.5 gigs!!! HOW COME IT"S MISSING OVER 500 mb? Please help!!!!! Need I return it or not. Thanks, 10 points to best answer
A: Couple of reasons 1) there may be installed software on it. 2) There is a difference between how humans count to 1 GB and how computers count to 1 GB, Humans use decimal GB where 1 GB = 1000 MB, computers use binary GB where 1024 Kb = 1 MB and 1024 MB = 1 GB. This means that a drive with 8,000,000,000 bytes on it will be a decimal 8 GB drive, but the computer will count it as about 7% less - or 7.45 binary GB But -- it's still the same 8 billion bytes either way - you are not missing any memory. It is normal, and all drives have this 'problem' (which isn't a problem, it's just a difference in terminology) (ignore the people who say the space is lost to formatting. Not true)