I just reformatted an 8Gb USB drive as ext3. While as FAT32, it was reported as having well over 7Gb free (did not note the exact capacity). I reformatted with mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1 Now it is reported (oh, this is with properties in Nautilus) as having 6.8Gb capacity (free space actually). Does this makes sense that ext3 has less available space than fat32?