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Why is my 16 GB USB Flash Drive read as 14.5 GB only?

Created: Tuesday, 13 August 2013 Written by Ehab Eldeeb

This is a frequently asked question

Why is my 16 GB USB flash drive read as 14.5 GB?
Why is my 320 GB Hard Drive read as 298 GB only?
Why is my 1 TB Hard Drive read as 931 GB only?!

This article applies on every single storage device .. Hard Drives or Flash Drives or Memories ...etc.

First thing, we need to know some calculations:

• 1 GB = 1024 MB
• 1 MB = 1024 KB
• 1 KB = 1024 bytes

So, using this algorithm, let's calculate how much is 16 GB in bytes
16 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 17,179,869,184 bytes

BUT! in windows, your 16 GB drive is read as 15,597,895,680 bytes Why?!

That's because windows uses a different algorithm to calculate capacity

• 1 GB = 1000 MB
• 1 MB = 1000 KB
• 1 KB = 1000 bytes

So theoretically, 16 GB = 16,000,000,000
Let's do a reverse calculation .. 16,000,000,000 divided by (1024 * 1024 * 1024)
The result is 14.9 GB

The difference between 16 GB and 14.9 GB is due to this algorithm

BUT ONCE AGAIN!
It should be 16,000,000,000 (14.9 GB)
But it actually is 15,597,895,680 (14.5 GB)
This variation depends on the manufacturing company
(In this example .. Kingston takes 0.4 GB out of 14.9 to yield out 14.5)

This test was performed using a Kingston 16 GB Data Traveler