Total Amount of Sector on USB Drive
When a USB drive is plugged into a VM or any computer, the computer recognizes the total amount of sectors on the drive. However, the drive itself might not know the total amount of sectors, as the sectors are divided into parts such as the sector, cluster, and allocation unit.
Understanding Sectors, Clusters, and Allocation Units
A sector is the smallest unit of data storage on a hard disk or flash drive. It typically holds 512 bytes of data, although newer drives may use sectors of 4096 bytes or more.
A cluster is a group of sectors that are allocated together on a hard disk or flash drive. The size of a cluster can vary, but it is usually a power of 2, such as 512 bytes, 1024 bytes, 2048 bytes, or 4096 bytes.
An allocation unit is the smallest unit of space that can be allocated to a file on a hard disk or flash drive. It is usually the same size as a cluster.
How the Computer Calculates the Total Amount of Sectors
When a USB drive is connected to a computer, the computer calculates the total amount of sectors by multiplying the number of clusters by the size of each cluster. For example, if the drive has 10,000 clusters, each of which is 4096 bytes, the total amount of sectors would be 40,960,000 bytes (10,000 clusters * 4096 bytes).
The Drive Itself Does Not Know the Total Amount of Sectors
It is important to note that the drive itself does not know the total amount of sectors. The sectors are managed by the operating system, and the drive only knows about the sectors that it has been instructed to use. This is why it is possible to format a drive and change its capacity.