291mb on storage card from 4 word docs!

[Guest w411y]

I got a 1gb SD in my M1500. In System -> Memory its saying I have used up 291mb and have 680 free! Went into file explorer and only 3 word docs and 1 spreadsheet are saved to the card. Went into Exlporer and looked if there were any hidden files and none there!

:?: How can this be?

[Guest Pondrew]

Have you recorded any voicenotes or similar? These can save themselves attached to word/notepad files and use up considerably more space...

[Guest w411y]

Nope just checked and none found! This is bizzare, 300mb cant come out of nowhere! anything i can do to wipe the card of everything?

[Guest beersoft]

isnt it the 1000 bytes is a kilobyte problem?

the formatted capacity for 1 gig is about 976meg

later

Owen

[Guest w411y]

Yep total capacity is 963mb but that doesn't explain how 291mb is used when ive deleted everything off the card and nothing appears when i click show hidden files :?:

[Guest beersoft]

hmmm......

there is either lost sectors and the card needs a format (always a good idea) or your office documents are using powerpoints magical ability to make a 40k image 8meg :)

(i would format the card)

later

Owen

[Guest Tech]

its nothing to do with lost sectors

when you format a card/harddrive/floppy/CDRW you will ALWAYS LOOSE a few megabytes/hundred bytes/whatever because that is using it up for it's FAT (to keep a record of all file locations etc....)

as for the REAL problem about the word docs.... have you tried to copy them over to your computer, deleting the docs on the miniSD card and then seeing what the size is?

after this, can you format it the minSD card using an sd card reader or something?

once done, copy the files back over.... whats the total size consumed now?

[Guest beersoft]

tech, thats always a fun story

drives are sold with sizes in base 10, and computers work in base 2

the storage device manufactures say 1kb is 1000bytes and everyone knows its 1024bytes

thats why a 250gig hard disk is only 233gigs and thats also why a 1gig card is 960meg

sd card do need formatting everysooften just to remove all the clutter and 'lost' files it doesnt bother cleaning up

later

Owen

[Guest w411y]

I cut everything off the card and pasted it to the computer and the docs in total were 43kb and there was still 291mb used on the card.

Do not have a card reader so installed Flash Format onto my device which also said 291mb was used and that 0 files were on the card.

However a format did clear that and pasting the docs back onto the card there is 43kb in use :D

Cheers for the help :)