[dba-Tech] Curious about USB thumb drives

[Stuart McLachlan]

Looks like you fomratted as NTFS.  THat will always take about 91MB on a 64GB drive.
The NTFS filesystem uses a number of internal files including a master file table 
("$MFT"), a recovery log file("$LogFile"), a volume descriptor file ("$Volume") etc
Most of that space is occupied by the pre-allocated  cluster allocation bitmap 
("$Bitmap") that keeps track of what space  is used and what space is free.


On 7 Mar 2022 at 13:20, Arthur Fuller wrote:

> After suffering a problem with one of my USB thumb drives, I formatted
> it (not quick, but regular). The drive is purported to be a 64GB
> drive. After the format was complete, I clicked Properties and the
> dialog said: Capacity 64,019, 755, 008 bytes (59.6 GB). Used space =
> 96, 100, 352 bytes (91.6 MB). So I got what I expected. I'm just
> curious as to what that 91.6 MB is used for.
> 
> -- 
> Arthur
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