16 gb flash drive, only 14 gb usable

[Joanne Ap-apid]

when you have a 16 gb memory card or flash drive, why is it that only 14 point something gb is only usable?

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's standard. Most memory, flash drives and hard drives do not ever actually have the advertised capacity. Here is a good explanation of why:

http://petapixel.com/2012/10/10/why-hard-drives-and-memory-cards-have-less-space-than-advertised/

 

[MeteorsRaining]

Simply put, in technical terms, 1GB= 1024MB=1,073,741,824 bytes

But, storage companies put the GB defination like this, 1GB= 1,000,000,000 bytes (decimal system)

You lose about 73MB of space per GB that way. This rougly equals, 73X16=~1170MB of space advertised which doesn't exist in the drive.

So in a 16GB Flash drive, you get around 14830MB~14.8GB. Some of the space is used up for cache and encryption stuff and one usually get about 14.5GB free on a 16GB flash. Your PC is alright in showing that.