Tell me more ×
Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

I'm trying to burn Hexxeh's Chormium OS Diet onto my 1GB flash drive. Hexxeh advertises that it should fit on a 1GB flash drive. But it will not fit.

It turns out that my Mac shows the flashdrive has size 970MB (about). The .img file I'm trying to burn onto it has size 996MB (about). Hmph.

Is there any way to format the drive differently to squeeze out those last 26MB I need? Any other tricks? Or is there no hope? Are all 1GB flash drives actually around 970MB, and Hexxeh was just confused?

Thanks, Jason

share|improve this question
6  
It's the old 1024 vs 1000 thing, I'm afraid - your drive is a base-10 GB, Hexxeh wants a base-2 GB. Yes, it's stupid. That's marketing for you :( – Phoshi Nov 25 '10 at 18:57
@Phoshi - why a comment and not an answer? – Nifle Nov 25 '10 at 19:53
@Nifle; I don't know, I do that a lot. Maybe it should be an answer - generally I write comments because it's faster and I may not have the knowledge required to completely answer the question. – Phoshi Nov 25 '10 at 20:16
@Nifle; For example, for this question, the OP specifies they use a mac - now, recent versions of OS X do show the values in base-10, so if the op is using one of those, my answer would be utterly wrong and I'm not sur3e what's causing it. – Phoshi Nov 25 '10 at 20:28
Your drive contains 1,000,000 bytes, which equates to about 0.93gb (formatted capacity varies). What Hexxeh needs is 1gb, which is 1,073,741,824 bytes. I'm not sure if it is possible to "burn" the image to the drive which would result in a different format - or if you can buy a drive that contains a base-2 representation of 1gb. The solution is probably just to buy a 2gb flash drive, but who knows. I'm with Phoshi here in that I don't know macs well enough. – Resorath Nov 25 '10 at 20:36
show 1 more comment

2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Hard drive/ flash disk manufacturers mention capacity in terms of billion bits, but most OS and applications measure capacity in bytes. So, pretty much there's no way to "squeeze" anything, because you're already using every bit of it.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

A MAC also likes putting all sorts of hidden folders on a flash drive, with all sorts of weird crap in.

Every time my flash drive goes near a Mac and I bring it back to my windows PC I have to delete junk off it.

Perhaps you have a similar issue here.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.