8GB pendrive shows 7.21 GB as available capacity

Hi Farazz, this is normal, it is because of the difference in the way PC manufacturers and hard drive manufacturers calculate a GB

Windows uses 1000 as the multiplier, hard drive manufacturers use 1024 (which is correct)

And Windows sees 8000MB as 7.450581GB

FaraazMalak,

You must have formatted it with a different cluster size, and the original drive must've had a cluster size that made it read as 7.26 before. The cluster size is the smallest space you can use to store a file.

Experiment with the cluster sizes, as well as varying file systems, and see what result you want out of it. Typical overhead allocated by essential files stored by NTFS or FAT32 (in your case) will vary greatly on what cluster size you choose when formatting your drive. Microsoft has an article for this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/140365...

Source (applies to Windows 8 but this is a universal standard that works across many of the Windows operating systems): https://superuser.com/questions/826416/why-flas...

Hi Dave,

Yes, ideally I should be getting 7.45 GB, but I am actually getting only 7.20 GB....Any idea ? 

Thanks

Hi FaraazMalak,

My name is Fernando. I am an Independent Advisor. I am here to guide you with a recommendation on the information you are seeking.

On average, about 5% of a devices storage capacity is reserved for this operating firmware. Unfortunately, as the size of the data capacity increases, so does the size of the space needed for the firmware. For a point of reference, a 1GB USB flash drive requires about 72Mb of space for firmware; where as a 32GB flash drive requires about 2.2GB worth of space for firmware.

So taking a look back at the original question, how much space does a USB flash drive really have? Well it depends on the size of the USB drive, but on average it is a safe bet to take off 5% of the advertised capacity and that is the realistic data capacity size.

Please let me know if this information helps.

Thank you,

Fernando Y.