Unformatted space on drives

[nikki8 1]

I've recently bought some 1TB Seagate external hard drives (formatted in NTFS) and some PNY 64GB flash drives (formatted in FAT32), and all of them have about 2MB of unallocated space on them. Does anyone know the purpose of this?

I intend to reformat them anyway, so will it matter if I use the 2MB? Presumably the unallocated space was left for a reason.

Thanks

[anywhere 6]

Is it the file system?

Try a zero fill with dd from /dev/null. Then fdisk. Then try xfs/ext/jfs/jfs2/btrfs, see if they have same results.

Sent from my rooted HTC Supersonic using Tapatalk 2 Pro

[nikki8 1]

Is it the file system?

Try a zero fill with dd from /dev/null. Then fdisk. Then try xfs/ext/jfs/jfs2/btrfs, see if they have same results.

Sent from my rooted HTC Supersonic using Tapatalk 2 Pro

Was this answer meant for a different thread? It doesn't seem to relate to my question.

(Incidentally /dev/zero is used for zero-filling a drive under Linux.)

[reader50 5]

If the space shows as available, you can use it.

The exact size available on a new drive will vary after they reserve replacement blocks, and map out any bad blocks. They probably use a standard format size (the drive's official size or bigger), which will be a little lower than actual free space.

Edited June 29, 2014 by reader50

[anywhere 6]

Was this answer meant for a different thread? It doesn't seem to relate to my question.

(Incidentally /dev/zero is used for zero-filling a drive under Linux.)

M$ doesn't have such a thing?

Hmm. Bummer. I use it all the time to ensure maximum device usage. Maybe commercial software should include something as flexible as open source?

But as mentioned, maybe it's factory reserved blocks your fighting. Play with hdparm? Oh, sorry, that's another free Linux tool.

Good luck.

Sent from my rooted HTC Supersonic using Tapatalk 2 Pro

Edited July 5, 2014 by anywhere