i know that someone else here has experenced this, why does an ipod, flashdrive, hard drive of a comp, nevr have as much  hard drive space as it says??? like for example:  i have an 30gb video ipod but it only says i have 28.79gb, also a 2gb flash drive but it says i only have 1.82gb, someone please tell me why?

because bytes are eight bits.

ooo ok thanks, so really i have the same amount?

It's partly because of the whole MegaBytes/MebiBytes story and the File Allocation Table also needs space (and maybe some special hidden Ipod firmware partition)

kk

The space that is being reported as 30GB really means 30 billion bytes. but 1 kilobyte actually equals 1024 bytes, not 1000. same is true for megabytes

30b bytes ÷ 1024kb ÷ 1024 Mb ÷ 1024 Gb = 27.94Gb (approx.)

Hard disk sizes are quotes in (true) gigabytes (GB) (with 1000 = 10^3 being the multiplier used to transform between gigabytes and kilobytes (KB = kB) and bytes (B)).

Nearly all software (eg Microsoft Windows) measures disk space in gibibytes (GiB) (with 1024 = 2^10 being the multiplier used to transform between gibibytes and kebibytes (KiB) and bytes) but calls it gigabytes.

So really, your 30 gigabyte Ipod has 28.79 gibibytes of space and your 2 gigabyte flash disk has 1.82 gibibytes of space. You haven't been ripped off, it's just that one gibibyte is a bit bigger that one gibabyte, and software measures in gibibytes but calls them gigabytes even though they are different (and the more the size the bigger the difference, 1 KB = 0.98 KiB, 1 GB = 0.93 GiB).