I figured out how big a memory block is!
I was downloading the Halo 2 map packs on my Xbox 360, and saw that each pack was a certain number of blocks of memory in size. For years I've been wanting to know how big a memory block is.
So I looked at the hard drive of the Xbox 360, and it said I had 44.0 GB of space free. So I then downloaded 35,473 blocks worth of map packs, and it said I had 43.5 GB free space.
Now only going to 0.1 Gb is not very detailed, but I took 512 Mb and multiplied it by 1024 to get the size in KiloBytes. Which gave me 524,288 Kb.
Divide that by the 35,473 blocks I just downloaded, and I get an answer of 14.78 Kb per block.
Assuming that it's probably a round number, I'd say 15 Kilobytes is a block, or more likely 16 Kb, since 16 is a base-2 number commonly used in computers.
So 16 Kilobytes is a block as far as I can tell. I don't know why they don't just use Kilobytes in the first place instead of the "block" term.
So I looked at the hard drive of the Xbox 360, and it said I had 44.0 GB of space free. So I then downloaded 35,473 blocks worth of map packs, and it said I had 43.5 GB free space.
Now only going to 0.1 Gb is not very detailed, but I took 512 Mb and multiplied it by 1024 to get the size in KiloBytes. Which gave me 524,288 Kb.
Divide that by the 35,473 blocks I just downloaded, and I get an answer of 14.78 Kb per block.
Assuming that it's probably a round number, I'd say 15 Kilobytes is a block, or more likely 16 Kb, since 16 is a base-2 number commonly used in computers.
So 16 Kilobytes is a block as far as I can tell. I don't know why they don't just use Kilobytes in the first place instead of the "block" term.
1
Comments
16 kilobytes block.
According to microsoft the Xbox Hard Drive has 500,000 blocks, 340,000 of which are available to the user for data storage, such as save game files. The other 160,000 blocks are only accesible to developers, perhaps to temporarily store data, patches, expansions, addons to games, or the such in the future.
That is the info I got from microsoft themselves. Work out the math and it makes sense: 8,000 megabytes (8 gigs) divided by 500,000 = 0.016MB, or 16 kilobytes.
On subject: I remember when getting into N64 "hacking" 1MB was 1 "block"
-Bobby
The "block" term is a legacy term used for game consoles since 1994 and the Sony PlayStation. The PS1's memory card was 128KB, but in 1994 most gamesaves could be fit into 8kb or so, so Sony probably figured 15 "blocks" was more gamer-friendly than the unweildy kilobytes.
(15 blocks of 8KB with about 8KB reserved)
But I agree, time to move on. Most people better understand bytes/KB/MB etc. The Xbox 360 (and possibly the other consoles?) has acknowledged this and uses Bytes to represent data storage.
On any drive, a block is the smallest amout of space that can be allocated to a file. You can't have parts of more than one file in any block. So, it's actually a more important measurement for that drive than actual space is. If you have a 17k file on a drive with 16k blocks, that file takes two blocks (not 1 and 1/16), and the rest of the second block is essentially wasted space.
This is because if you had a FAT that could map the contents of every bit on the drive, and which file owns it, the FAT would be just as big or bigger than the actual storage space (which would be impractical.)