I just bought a 12 GB Pendrive. When I tested it, It was only 2 GB (Yeah, I just got cheated).
But then I ask: Is it possible to create a 12 GB Pendrive (specially with 1 chip) ?? If noy, why ??
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Sure it is. But it's not practical since it would require three 4GB chips instead of one 8GB or 16GB chip.
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
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I suppose you could have a 16GB chip with only 12GB marked as usable, but there wouldn't be much point. – Keith Thompson Apr 10 '12 at 01:06
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@Ignacio: Those are RAM chips, and the chosen answer for that question references the tie between memory address sizes and the CPU. That's completely irrelevant for storage devices. – Lèse majesté Apr 10 '12 at 01:19
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@Lèse: Except it really isn't. The reason for both is the same. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Apr 10 '12 at 01:23
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1@Ignacio: Is that why 12GB microSD cards exist? And if that were the case, how exactly does a 3-bit MLC NAND chip work? – Lèse majesté Apr 10 '12 at 01:35
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@Ignacio: Did you even watch the video? He basically refutes your point at around the 2min mark. They chop a 48Gb array to get roughly a 16Gb and 32Gb array. It's roughly because you can't get an even 16Gb/32Gb split on a 48Gb array made from 16Kibi (17179869184) cells. Do the math yourself if you don't believe me... No matter how you split an array of 3-bit cells, you're not gonna get a power of two. – Lèse majesté Apr 10 '12 at 02:03
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They have just adjusted the controller and/or partition to return those values; in some occasnions reformatting gives you the effective limit, in other cases writing past the limit just makes it wrap around from the start again. So, if you would write 3 GB on a 2 GB, you would be overwriting 1 GB of the first 2 GB that you've written.
Long story short:They indeed tampered with it, trust is an important consideration when buying...
Tamara Wijsman
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