[uncle b]

I was wondering if any of the many Zen Micro owners here would share how much space formatting takes up on your player? On mine, my avaialable space is like 4749mb, so I'm thinking there's about 200mb or so floating around in format land. That seems like kind of a lot for a 5G player.Is there anything I can do to claim back some of that space? Any help would be appreciated...

 

[dynamius]

4749MB = 5GB given that ...

1K = 1,000 bytes, 1MB = 1,000K, 1GB = 1,000MB
which all comes down to
1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes

in the actual computer world, there's a little more than 1,000 bytes in 1K. the Zen Micro calculates free space using the actual computer values which is represented by the following:

1K = 1,024 bytes, 1MB = 1,024K, 1GB = 1,024MB
1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Given that the Zen Micro displays 4749MB of free space, that translates over to 4,979,687,424 bytes which, in the marketing world, is practically 5,000,000,000 bytes giving you "5GB." In reality you're actually getting 4.63GB, a little more than what a single layer DVD can hold.

This marketing method of calculation is used for all harddrives and memory of all kinds nowadays.

 

[Cyclone]

you should also notice that your computer hard drive isnt exactly 80gb or whatever you bought, its almost always a little less. That 200mb (only 4% of the HD capacity) isnt really that big of a thing, considering that you dont always get as much as what shows up on the specs and you have to use some of that space for firmware and other player critical code. If you are going to miss that 4% dearly, i dont think a 5gb player is for you any how.