Panasonic PV-GS15 SD Card layout

Discussion in 'Panasonic Lumix' started by ps56k, May 4, 2008.

  1. ps56k

    ps56k Guest

    at my wife's work., they have a Panasonic PV-GS15 camcorder.
    It uses DV for the video, and has a SD Card for still photos.

    In connecting the camcorder to her laptop,
    and looking at photos (the card was full)
    it was supposed to be a 8MB card,
    but a right-click properties showed 6.45MB ???

    The layout was like this :
    \dcim -> the normal photos were here
    \misc ???
    \private\vtf\title ???

    I wonder if the other sub-dirs were for special things the camera could do
    They were empty -
    SO - if the card should be seen as 8MB, and is only showing 6.45MB,
    then where is the rest of it going ????
    ps56k, May 4, 2008
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  2. To "sector slop". Any FAT formatted card requires a minimum of one
    sector (512 bytes) to store ANYTHING, even a single byte of information.
    The cluster size (minimum number of sectors allocated to store anything)
    could be more than one sector, which makes the slop even worse.

    If you're ambitious, you could take each file's reported size, then
    round up to the nearest multiple of 512. You'll get closer to 8 MB.
    There's also two copies of the FAT table, and space reserved for the
    root directory (with every directory entry requiring 32 bytes).

    Also, though it is unlikely, there can be hidden files and directories
    on the card, that you might not be seeing.

    Gene S. Berkowitz, May 5, 2008
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  3. 8MB? This card must be truly ancient. Today cards with 1000 times the
    capacity are readily available for little money.
    Showing 6.45MB of _WHAT_? Total capacity? Used space? Available space on
    an empty drive? Total data on drive? All those numbers mean something
    different and will be different.
    Many different possibilities, depending upon _WHAT_ number those 6.45MB
    are actually referring to:
    - file system was created with a smaller capacity
    - file system overhead; any file system requires some space to store its
    own meta information like e.g. directory information, free sector list,
    - cluster loss due to large cluster sizes. This can be particularly bad
    on a small drive like that when you choose a large cluster size.
    Remember, on average the last cluster of each file will be half empty.
    I.e. if you choose a cluster size of 32kB then you are loosing 16kB per
    file on average
    - difference between decimal and binary MB, i.e. between 8x1.000.000
    byte and 8x2^20 (=8x1.048.576 = 8388608) byte.
    - you misinterpreted the numbers
    - ...

    Jürgen Exner, May 5, 2008
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