iPod Mini problems....

Author
Discussion

tvradict

Original Poster:

3,829 posts

275 months

Friday 30th December 2005
quotequote all
Girlfriend had an iPod Mini.

Just recently it started thinking it has less memory than it does. The iPod shows it has 3.7GB Capacity and 1.3GB available.

However, iTunes can't fit all the music in her library on it. The iTunes library is 2.84 GB, yet when it gets to 2.4GB it says the iPod is full.

She has nothing on it other than Music.

She has reinstalled iTunes, cleared her iPod, we've looked on the Apple website but can't find anything of use.

Anyone got any ideas?

TIA
Stuart.

cowhead

254 posts

221 months

Friday 30th December 2005
quotequote all
My 20GB iPod only has a memory capacity of 18.5GB when completely empty - i imagine it's the same for the mini's too. Crap ain't it?

tvradict

Original Poster:

3,829 posts

275 months

Saturday 31st December 2005
quotequote all
Yeah, my 30GB is the same, claims to be 30GB but only has 27.8GB. Her Mini claims to be 4GB, but its only 3.7GB. Still, I'd love to know how iTunes has lost over 1gb of memory though.

>> Edited by tvradict on Saturday 31st December 00:23

jodypress

1,929 posts

275 months

Saturday 31st December 2005
quotequote all
The source of this problem is the true definition of a kilobyte: 1024 bytes, not 1000.

1024 is a much nicer number in the binary system than 1000, so this approximation was made many years ago.

This wasn't such a big deal in the past, when hard drives didn't get much bigger than a few hundred megabytes or so. But now, in the days of multi-gigabyte drives, people are really noticing the difference.

The marketing people use the "proper" defintion of "kilo": 1000, not 1024. This is because it results in a bigger number of bytes. So there is always a descrepancy.

Some people try to explain away the lost space by saying "that's just what happens when you format it", which is incorrect.

I think they have pushed this marketing trick to the limit. People are noticing the difference. Companies should immediately start using the correct (i.e. 1024 based) defintion of kilo/mega/gigabytes when specifying drive sizes.

however, if you only have 2.84 gb of music it should still fit on the ipod. try formatting the ipod to clear it completely.

tvradict

Original Poster:

3,829 posts

275 months

Saturday 31st December 2005
quotequote all
I agree, 3 Gig of a difference is just too much.

How do u format an Ipod?

chriswright

354 posts

223 months

Saturday 31st December 2005
quotequote all
From the apple support pages Resetting an ipod

tvradict

Original Poster:

3,829 posts

275 months

Saturday 31st December 2005
quotequote all
Thanks for the replies everyone.

Its Sorted.

She has the Enable Disk Use box checked and her music folder was full of stuff that iTunes couldn't see