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gudii9Flag for United States of America

asked on

mini micro sd cards

i bought two 128gb mini mocro sd card one from sandisc other from patriot

when i insert card to laptop to check size by right clicking on it and proprties shows 119gb for sandisc card

when i insert card to laptop to check size by right clicking on it and proprties shows 119gb for patriot card

i wonder why 128gb they do not show
also why both show different?

any place i can put price alerts to get deals email to my gmail
please advise
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Jackie Man
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when i insert card to laptop to check size by right clicking on it and proprties shows 119gb for sandisc card

when i insert card to laptop to check size by right clicking on it and proprties shows 119gb for patriot card

You do not have a problem, This is a classic marketing con trick.

The marketing people use kilo as 1000, mega as 1,000,000 and giga as 1000,000,000

A Gibabyte proper is 1024*1024*1024 bytes.

A Gigabyte in marketing is 1000*1000*1000

Thus they say 128,000,000,0000 bytes as 128 gigabytes.

Your computer works in proper gigabytes, so

128,000,000,0000 / (1024*1024*1024) = approx 119 (real) gigabytes.

Source: https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2116374/why-does-my-128gb-micro-sd-card
any place i can put price alerts to get deals email to my gmail

Which online merchants you are referring to?
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noci

This is NOT a classic marketing trick......
SI (Systeme International)   Unit specifies the multipliers for units
1000 kan be abreviated to kilo (one thouasand)
1'000'000  can be replaces with M (Mega)
1.00.000.000 can be replaced  with G (Giga)

ICT people hijacked this by saying 1000 is more or less equal to 1024.... (which it is NOT).
For Units of information another multiplier has been defined
Ki (1024)                      (kibi)
Mi  (1024*1024)           (Mebi)
Gi (1024*1024*1024)   (Gibi)

So
You Expect 128 Gib, the box says 128GB
the 128GB = 128 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 =  128.000.000.000
You computer divides by 1024  and calculates 128.000.000.000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 =119GiB,
But tells 119GB   (which actualy should have been 119 GiB)

(note gb means nothing at all: g is no abbreviating for a multiplier) and b = bits.   and 8 bits go into 1 Byte
als one order of a magnitude difference.

Another hint why this is not (Hard)disk manufacturers gone wrong...
the need to specify stull in parts of milimeters... (which is 1/1000 * meter) or micrometers (1/1000 of a milli meter).
Those are NOT 1/1024 etc. changing the multipliers would yield non-working devices when dealing with micrometers.
With chips this needs to work out to nanometer scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
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ASKER

so why kingston shows 119 gb where as other card only shows 117 gb

Which online merchants you are referring to?
any online site is ok as long as i get good deal and good product.
i purchased one from ebay but it did not work at all earlier
>>  i purchased one from ebay but it did not work at all earlier   <<  that's a risk you have, but you can return it for free, no?
i try to avoid bying from ebay as i can ! i try Always to use well known companies

and different ram cards may have a different use of the ram, so there can be (small) differences in their size, but usually windows shows less size than the product advertises  for all harddisks, ssd, and m2 drives
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noci

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