Memory consumption of a SD Card

[Unused]

hello from germany...

i have a question about the memory consumption on a SD Card. I have installed a 512 MB SD Card in my XDA Neo. When i look via the Windows Startmenu -> Settings -> Memory, it says, that on the card are 477 MB toal memory an 14,5 MB are free.

now, when is start TotalComander 2.5b and click on the folder "Storage Card" and tab with the pen the propertys od this (virtual) folder / card, TotalCommander means, that there 303 MB data in this directory, when i click the second tab of this info box from totalcommander, ist displays me the exact values from the windows dialog.

but i think 477 MB - 14,5 MR are not 303 MB ... or im wrong ? whats with the rest of the memory ? where is it gone ? why do i have a 512 mb card and can only use 477 mb ? (ok the last pint belongs to the card /windows mobile 5)...

im very confused...

[ghisler(Author)]

A file always takes a multiple of the so-called cluster size on the disk. So when the cluster size is 32kBytes, each file takes a multiple of these 32k, even if it's only 1 byte small. If the SD-Card was formatted with FAT32, the cluster size is usually 4kBytes. When it's formatted with FAT16, the cluster size is much larger, probably 32k or even 64kBytes.

So if you have many small files like txt or html, a lot of space will be wasted.

[Unused]

Hmm i have some html Pages at the PDA (SelfHTML, SelfPHP, WinFAQ), i can throw this files of the PDA and try it again... thanks for your reply...

[Unused]

I have installed WM5Storage to my XDA Neo and copied all the data to my PC. After that i have formated the SD Card with FAT32 and copied the data back to the SD Card. Now i have 155 MB free on the disk, so the problem is solved.

But what for a diference on a 512 MB SD Card with FAT and FAT32...