Only 8GB of internal storage?

[Reverence]

I know that they advertised 16GB of internal storage, with an asterisk stating that actual formatted capacity would be less, but I didn't think that much less. When I went into my phone settings->storage, it shows 4GB for apps, and then 8GB of internal storage. Is that what everyone else has?

I mean, I guess if the 8 and 4 are together to bring the total internal storage to 12GB, then that isn't too bad, but if it is only showing 8GB of internal storage, what happened to the other 8GB?

 

[ElectroM]

I went by my local Verizon store and played with the display unit. I saw the same storage capacity as you stated, 8 gb internal storage. I asked the sales person about this and he said that was a display model, the phone would have 16 gb for the internal storage if I bought one. I decided to wait and did not purchase, so I don't know if the phone would have 16 gb like he stated. I would take it back and make sure if I were you. They had 3 on display in the store, so maybe (hopefully) you got a display phone by mistake. If not, you might consider returning it, since it clearly states 16 gb internal storage on the display information card. If I decide to get one I will certainly check before leaving the store. The 4 gb is the phones memory, not storage, according to the sales person. The display had 8 gb internal storage, with 8 gb free.

 

[Reverence]

Well I had 8GB of internal storage and there is a 16GB SD card pre-installed.

 

[longball10]

This is from the Bionic site.



"16GB internal memory for emails, texts, and apps

 

[ChiefIlliniwek5]

I'm also facing the same thing. My applicatoin storage available space is 3.53 GB. For internal storage, it says I have a total space of 8GB and available space is 8GB. Can someone explain the difference between internal storage and applicatoin storage?

 

[hkklife]

Think of the 16GB internally configured as this:

4GB is the default space for apps
8GB is the "internal" SD card

the remaining ~4GB is reserved for Webtop, OS usage, the storage heap, formatting, etc. It's basically invisible to the user.

Then your 16GB microSDHC card is probably best reserved for really large game installs and/or media files.

Personally, I would have rather seen Moto omit the bundled SD card and bump up the internal storage to 32GB. Divide that up into, 6 or 8 or so for app storage, 16 to 18 for internal storage, and the rest reserved for the system. Oh well.

 

[Vihzel]

I forgot that it was actually discussed here that there would be a certain amount of GB specially allocated for WebTop.

 

[BlueBiker]

Seems to me Motorola is setting themselves up for a class action false advertising lawsuit here. Only 8GB usable to a user when 16GB was advertised is absurd. Filesystem formatting typically takes maybe 1-3% overhead. There are other phones w/8GB advertised where a much higher percentage remains available. Someone's going to end up with some $$$ here (probably just lawyers) and Moto will need to be very explicit in their advertising.

 

[ElectroM]

It is obvious now that the sales person I talked to yesterday is willing to lie if he thinks it will help him make a sale. He's pretty darn good at it, too. I will no longer do business at the Verizon store in Greer, SC.

 

[longball10]

Did you even read the post because that was the very first line in it. As far as the way the internal storage is divided, 4gb for apps, 8gb misc, and the rest is formatting and most likely webtop.

While I did miss that... It still answers the question.

 

[thenew3]

Why do people always think about sueing someone and making some $$ off of it rather than think clearly through the situation first? I'm sure Moto's legal team has thought this through (no company will put them self in a position for a easy class action suit).

So if you sit back and think it through, a 16 GB SD card formatted for android has about 14.8GB useable space.
subtract 8GB user and 4Gb apps apace from that and you're left with about 2.8GB "missing"

Have you thought about where the android OS is stored? and where the webtop "OS" is stored?
2.8GB to store all the OS and related files isn't so bad.

If you go and buy a computer with a "100GB hard disk" and it only has about 70GB useable after you boot it up for the first time, are you going to file class action against the computer manufacturer because a 100GB HD really only has about 95 GB after formatting, windows 7 takes another 20GB or so, and most manufacturers add a recovery partition of 5 to 10GB. So the end user really only have 65 to 70 GB of useable space on the HD. Well that's not the advertised 100GB HD, let's file class action!

 

[BlueBiker]

Why do people always think about sueing someone and making some $$ off of it rather than think clearly through the situation first?

You don't own a monopoly on clear thinking.

I'm sure Moto's legal team has thought this through (no company will put them self in a position for a easy class action suit).

It happens all the time. If no company did it, then there would be none of the lawsuits that you object to.

So if you sit back and think it through, a 16 GB SD card formatted for android has about 14.8GB useable space.
subtract 8GB user and 4Gb apps apace from that and you're left with about 2.8GB "missing"

Have you thought about where the android OS is stored? and where the webtop "OS" is stored?
2.8GB to store all the OS and related files isn't so bad.

If you go and buy a computer with a "100GB hard disk" and it only has about 70GB useable after you boot it up for the first time, are you going to file class action against the computer manufacturer because a 100GB HD really only has about 95 GB after formatting, windows 7 takes another 20GB or so, and most manufacturers add a recovery partition of 5 to 10GB. So the end user really only have 65 to 70 GB of useable space on the HD. Well that's not the advertised 100GB HD, let's file class action!

First, traditional hard drives are measured in decimal gigabytes, where a 16GB hard drive contains 16,000,000,000 unformatted bytes. Internal memory is measured in binary gigabytes, where 16GB comes out to 17,179,869,184.

Second, PC recovery partitions and preinstalled bloatware can almost always be deleted/uninstalled and the space reclaimed. Crapware on a phone generally can't be removed unless you root it.

The bottom line is, Motorola should advertise something like "16GB internal space (8GB usable)" to avoid unwanted legal attention.

 

[rushmore]

Think of the 16GB internally configured as this:

4GB is the default space for apps
8GB is the "internal" SD card

the remaining ~4GB is reserved for Webtop, OS usage, the storage heap, formatting, etc. It's basically invisible to the user.

Then your 16GB microSDHC card is probably best reserved for really large game installs and/or media files.

Personally, I would have rather seen Moto omit the bundled SD card and bump up the internal storage to 32GB. Divide that up into, 6 or 8 or so for app storage, 16 to 18 for internal storage, and the rest reserved for the system. Oh well.

Flash format parameter space aside, this allocation (in proportion) is correct. I would rather have that space for media, like the Droid 3, since would never use WebTop. Wasted space for me. There is a net of 2.4gb of usable space missing, compared to the D3.

 

[thenew3]

First, traditional hard drives are measured in decimal gigabytes, where a 16GB hard drive contains 16,000,000,000 unformatted bytes. Internal memory is measured in binary gigabytes, where 16GB comes out to 17,179,869,184.

Second, PC recovery partitions and preinstalled bloatware can almost always be deleted/uninstalled and the space reclaimed. Crapware on a phone generally can't be removed unless you root it.

The bottom line is, Motorola should advertise something like "16GB internal space (8GB usable)" to avoid unwanted legal attention.

Take a look at any Flash memory (i.e. SSD, SD/CF cards) they are done the same way.

I.E. a 32GB SD card formats out to about 30GB useable space. the "extra" 2GB is hidden and used for wear leveling and bad block replacment.

If you buy a 120GB SSD, you're not going to end up with 120GB useable space. You'll have around 107 to 116 depending on the manufacturer. Even though there is phypsically 128GB of flash memory on it. The rest is reserved for wear leveling and bad block replacement.

This has been done for years.

How do I know? I've got a degree in computer system engineering and have been designing various chipsets for years.

 

[thenew3]

Flash format parameter space aside, this allocation (in proportion) is correct. I would rather have that space for media, like the Droid 3, since would never use WebTop. Wasted space for me. There is a net of 2.4gb of usable space missing, compared to the D3.

Correct, they (moto) should have made it possibe for folks to "remove/uninstall/delete" the webtop "partition/volume" for folks who won't ever use it and regain some of the storage space. Although I don't know how much the user would gain because I doubt the entire 2.x GB is dedicated to webtop, probably 1gb or so. But that adds complexity to the software, and complexity = cost.

 

[jikhead]

Per Droid-Life....

Internal Storage: People freaked out yesterday when they went into check out the storage of their device and realized that internally, it only showed as 8GB. ”But what the hell! They told us 16GB!” Well, it does have 16GB, it’s just been partitioned off so that you can’t have access to it all. Part of it has been given to the OS and the other part to to “Application storage.” If you add up the 4GB or so of app storage along with the internal you get to 12GB, which means that the OS (Blur) is taking up another 4GB.


Two Days with the Bionic: Some First Impressions, Bugs, and Other Thoughts - Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog

 

[BlueBiker]

I.E. a 32GB SD card formats out to about 30GB useable space. the "extra" 2GB is hidden and used for wear leveling and bad block replacment.

No. A card advertised as 32GB will have 32GB of unformatted space, probably in decimal gigabytes rather than binary (see above) which accounts for the seeming deficit of space.

In the original example, 16 decimal gigabytes comes out to 14.901 binary gigabytes (16,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024) without even subtracting anything for formatting overhead. Nothing was lost there, it's just that advertisers use a measurement that makes a disk look bigger than it actually is.

You're right that there will be extra wear leveling and bad block replacement areas, but those are completely hidden from the OS and do not come out of your 32GB. Over time as a relatively small number of blocks go bad, you'll still have the full 32GB available, and performance will degrade until you finally get a serious failure.

FWIW, some mission-critical filesystem types provide their own redundant blocks on top of the partition itself, so formatting losses would be even higher.

How do I know? I've got a degree in computer system engineering and have been designing various chipsets for years.

Heh, that's an appeal to authority fallacy. I respect your background, but you're wrong in this particular case.

 

[Telstar_2112]

I don't get it. I just bought the newest, top of the line phone to replace my "ancient" original droid. I went to copy the music from my old droid sd card and it does not even come close to fitting on the new Bionic with the same size card. Something is seriously wrong with this. Obviously the Original droid also had to store apps and operating system and still had plenty of room. Hopefully there will be fix.