Brand New 8Gb iPod: Available Space = 7.43Gb

Question

I just plugged in my brand new iPod, supposedly with 8Gb of memory available. Now I understand if some memory is chewed up by software/firmware etc, and that some 'rounding errors' show up with memory scaling. However, I find it hard to believe that there is over 500Mb 'missing' from the iPod. That's 7.125% loss of space, 7.43Gb out of 8.00Gb.
So my question overall is... is this normal and expected, or do I have a particulary unhappy set of flash memory? Are there any steps that should be taken, or is this a 'just eat it and be happy' kind of thing?
Thanks for the help,
-R

Answer 1

It's normal.
The OS accounts for a few mbs of storage space.
It's the way that storage space is calculated by manufacturers, and the way that computers read it differently.
Read this. Although it refers to hard drives (and the nano has flash memory), the calculations are the same, and that accounts for the so called "missing space". The decimal/binary difference affects all types of storage including both hard drives and flash memory.
iPod: About the hard disk size.
Hard disk: Is it missing space?
This is the excellent explanation by forum member Rich Fleming.
<quote> "The Flash in the Nano needs to emulate a hard disk, so that any computer it is attached to sees it as a valid storage device.
When you are using a DoM type of storage system, the Flash memory will behave exactly like a hard drive, and is subject to the exact same Binary vs Decimal discrepancy in the capacity measurements.
A 4GB Nano is 4 billion bytes (decimal 4,000,000,000) of storage... according to the operating system. This is because the operating system doesn't see it as a Flash memory. It sees it as an actual hard drive.
As such, 4 billion bytes to the operating system is reported as about 3.7GB of storage because of the decimal-to-binary conversion." <end of quote>