Got my new Imac with payed for a 500 gb Hd and got a 465.44gb

[NZEditer]

Hello i just brought got my new imac payed gor 2 gb ram payed for the better graphics card got that to. Then i payed for the 500 gb Hd and got a 465.44gb Hard Drive a hitachi one? was i saposed to get this ? Im new to mac ? pleasse help and is it saposed to have a Pionner dvd-rw Please help me? have i gotten what i payed for?

[liketom]

that sounds about right

a 500GB disc when formated will give you that number.

All HDD's are the same 80GB is around 76GB 160 is arounf 152GB ect

Also for detailed view at what you got - goto Apple (top left icon) then about this Mac ,there are links on there for Hardware and your software versions plus serial and build number

:)

[Veldek]

That's not a Mac thing. The HD companies advert their disks with 500 * 1000^3. As 2^10 = 1024, you have to calculate 500 * 1000^3 / 1024^3 = 465.66, which is about the size you have.

[kingkezz]

what about the fact that your OS and bundled software is installed on that hard drive??

[milo]

what about the fact that your OS and bundled software is installed on that hard drive??

If you read the original post, he's talking about how big his hard drive shows up as, not how much is free.

The other guys have explained this well already.

And what does this have to do with digital video???

[Chundles]

what about the fact that your OS and bundled software is installed on that hard drive??

That's going to come off the original space, it won't have any influence on the 500 -> 465GB change (that's due to differences between advertised space and how the computer sees it, as explained above the difference is usually ~7%) what it will do is knock about 20GB off that 465GB for all the iLife stuff, printer drivers, extra languages etc.

So you buy an iMac with an advertised 500GB which in computing terms is actually 465GB then you lose ~20GB to OSX and the bundled software. That's just the way it goes.

I doubt HDD manufacturers are going to start selling 465GB HDDs or 930GB etc. The round number works wonders and is easily classified in the fine print.

[cr2sh]

On a similar note, my brother purchased a compact Dell laptop with a 40GB harddrive. I got it and was installing some stuff for him and setting up his wireless, I noticed that that harddrive was a 30GB. I was like "WTF?" I know aout the 1024 conversion and expected a smaller number than 40... but not that small.

Turns out, Dell creates and hides a small partition on the harddrive for some sort of backup/restoration/idiotville nonsense.

Be thankful that doesn't happen on macs.

[topgunn]

Turns out, Dell creates and hides a small partition on the harddrive for some sort of backup/restoration/idiotville nonsense.

Whenever I buy a Dell (or any preconfig'd PC), I wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall. Imagine my surprise when I find out that I wiped out the restore partition and the system didn't have a backup CD. Now you specifically have to request backup CD's. Otherwise, you are wasting valuable hard disk space.

And to the original poster, this topic has been covered umpteen million times already. When a hard drive is sold, 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. When a hard drive is used, 1GB = 2^30 bytes. 500,000,000,000 bytes divided by 1024 gives KB (488,281,250KB) divided by 1024 gives MB (476,837MB) divided by 1024 gives GB (465.66GB). A simple search on either the forums or Google would have been easier.

[paleck]

Hello i just brought got my new imac payed gor 2 gb ram payed for the better graphics card got that to. Then i payed for the 500 gb Hd and got a 465.44gb Hard Drive a hitachi one? was i saposed to get this ? Im new to mac ? pleasse help and is it saposed to have a Pionner dvd-rw Please help me? have i gotten what i payed for?


If you really want someone to blame....blame marketting. I've always hated how they advertise harddrive sizes like this.

[yellow]

I don't suppose this question will ever go away, will it?
It's just going to get worse as HDs sizes get bigger.

[Les Kern]

Whenever I buy a Dell (or any preconfig'd PC), I wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall. Imagine my surprise when I find out that I wiped out the restore partition and the system didn't have a backup CD.

Probably the BEST PC attribute I can think of. I have bought several PC's and won't buy one without that hidden drive. It's becoming more and more ubiquitous, and that's a good thing. So when you tire of making new users to fix the inevitable bloating/slowing/crashing of XP, just boot and hold F9 (or whatever) and have a factory machine in about a half hour. Of course, loading all the updates and SW is a pain...

[eXan]

160 is arounf 152GB

148.93 :D to be exact

[whocares]

So when you tire of making new users to fix the inevitable bloating/slowing/crashing of XP, just boot and hold F9 (or whatever)

Or buy a Mac ;) :p :D

[Felldownthewell]

If you really want someone to blame....blame marketting. I've always hated how they advertise harddrive sizes like this.

It is exactly opposet of selling something for $9.99. One cent is not a whole lot cheaper, but it looks way better on paper. Similarly, 465.44GB does not scream "AMAZING COMPUTER DEAL OF FREAKING AWESOMENESS BUY BUY BUY NOW!!!!!!one!!!!eleven" in the same way 500gb does. That is, if computer ads screamed. Which I imagine some of them do.

[celebrian23]

It is exactly opposet of selling something for $9.99. One cent is not a whole lot cheaper, but it looks way better on paper. Similarly, 465.44GB does not scream "AMAZING COMPUTER DEAL OF FREAKING AWESOMENESS BUY BUY BUY NOW!!!!!!one!!!!eleven" in the same way 500gb does. That is, if computer ads screamed. Which I imagine some of them do.

Precisely. When I was getting my mbp 80GB HDD sounds so much better than 74GB. Dropping by one tens place is a big deal in advertising, thus the 9.99 trick ;)

[Yvan256]

Marketing has nothing to do with it. In fact, the marketers are the ones who are right (for once).

Back then, one "computer kilobyte" (1024 bytes) was close enough to one real kilobyte (1000 bytes), so programmers started using SI prefixes.

The problem is, the bigger the number, the larger this compounded rounding error gets. That's why you "lose" about 35GB when you go from the manufacturer size (500 GB) to the software size (465 GiB). My two "250GB" drives show up as 232 GiB drives for OS X.

That may not be obvious to people in the U.S.A. since you're not using the decimal system, but one kilo has always been 1000, not 1024. Blame the programmers for using the SI prefixes but not using the SI multipliers that goes with them.

There is new prefixes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte) to try and fix this problem, but it's hard to get people to use them. How would people react if Microsoft and Apple started using the "kibi/gibi/etc" prefixes in their next operating systems? It would stop the "1024 vs 1000" questions but would confuse a lot of users, so in the end it'd probably make an even bigger confusion.

[dextertangocci]

That's not a Mac thing. The HD companies advert their disks with 500 * 1000^3. As 2^10 = 1024, you have to calculate 500 * 1000^3 / 1024^3 = 465.66, which is about the size you have.

Thanks, I never knew that:)

[NZEditer]

So what your saying is thats normal i payed for a 500 gb hard drive and got a 465.44 gb Hd ? Is there any one else with a so called 500 gb imac with 465.44 gb hd ? Or should i go to Mac and say WTF ?
:confused:

[Chundles]

So what your saying is thats normal i payed for a 500 gb hard drive and got a 465.44 gb Hd ? Is there any one else with a so called 500 gb imac with 465.44 gb hd ? Or should i go to Mac and say WTF ?
:confused:

Have you not read the thread?

I'm going to spell this out for you as simply as I can because it's obvious you haven't understood.

Product manufacturers use SI units to advertise HDD space. There is always a little disclaimer, and it is present on the Apple website and in the manual that the HDD manufacturer uses SI units, it will say something akin to "1GB = 1000 million bytes." That means that 500GB = 500 x 10^9 bytes or 500,000,000,000 bytes.

A computer, as a binary system works in powers of 2, not 10, so a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes etc.

So, you paid for 500,000,000,000 bytes:

500,000,000,000 bytes divided by 1024 = 488281250 kilobytes
488281250 kilobytes divided by 1024 = 476837.158203125 megabytes
476837.158203125 megabytes divided by 1024 = 465.66128730774 gigabytes

So, 500GB in SI units = 465.66GB in computer terms. You have exactly what you paid for. The 0.22GB difference between 465.66GB and your 465.44GB is formatting on the HDD.

I don't know how to make it any clearer for you, Yvan256 and Veldek also explain it perfectly.

You paid for a 500GB hard drive and got a 500GB hard drive, there is just a difference between what manufacturers and computers see as a gigabyte.

[ikonq]

To put it in laymans terms- The drive has a 500GB capacity before formatting.

The unformatted drive is 500GB.
Formatting is then based on the mathematic equations aboved to work out what room there is.

Taking this matter to Apple will just result in someone telling you that "the disk you paid for is 500GB and the disk in your machine is 500GB but because it has been formatted and is ready for use the capacity is less. You'll find this with any and every formatted drive. (And no, you can't use unformatted drives- at least not to my knowledge).

When you look on of the apple tech specs pages for their products you'll see "Actual Formatted Capacity Less".

When you buy a drive, you can expect *roughly* 91.25% of it to be for use after being formatted. Also bear in mind that your OS and applications will take up some room too.

Apple did put a 500GB drive in there... Boot up Disk utility and you'll probably see that- The downside is that it had to be formatted before you could use it and formatting takes up space.

[Chundles]

To put it in laymans terms- The drive has a 500GB capacity before formatting.

The unformatted drive is 500GB.
Formatting is then based on the mathematic equations aboved to work out what room there is.

Taking this matter to Apple will just result in someone telling you that "the disk you paid for is 500GB and the disk in your machine is 500GB but because it has been formatted and is ready for use the capacity is less. You'll find this with any and every formatted drive. (And no, you can't use unformatted drives- at least not to my knowledge).

When you look on of the apple tech specs pages for their products you'll see "Actual Formatted Capacity Less".

When you buy a drive, you can expect *roughly* 91.25% of it to be for use after being formatted. Also bear in mind that your OS and applications will take up some room too.

Apple did put a 500GB drive in there... Boot up Disk utility and you'll probably see that- The downside is that it had to be formatted before you could use it and formatting takes up space.

It's not formatting that provides much of the space difference, as I stated above, the decrease in space from formatting a 500GB is just 0.22GB. The main culprit in the space gap is the mathematical difference between what a computer defines as a gigabyte and what the manufacturers define as a gigabyte.

Formatting will not take up 70GB on a 1TB drive, the difference is mathematical and the main reason behind the push to use new terminology for computer hard drives. Technically, 1024 bytes is not a kilobyte as the prefix "kilo" denotes 1000, not 1024. Thus the move to the KiB notation, along with MiB and GiB.

[whocares]

So what your saying is thats normal i payed for a 500 gb hard drive and got a 465.44 gb Hd ? Is there any one else with a so called 500 gb imac with 465.44 gb hd ? Or should i go to Mac and say WTF ?
:confused:

Sure, take it make to an Apple Store and make sure you get to talk to the manager. Maybe drop Steve Jobs a b**chin' e-mail: jobs@apple.com

Alternatively read the thread a few more times until you get all the nuances. ;)



You could also look on the bright side: you just got yourself 4,000,000,000,000 bits. Now this will really confuse you! :D 1 byte = 8 bits

[munkees]

Well My 250 GB drive in my iMac does have over 250GB of space, and here is how I prove it,

open disk uility select the drive now look at the info at the bottom unformated the drives says 233.8 formated is 233.4, now how many bytes is it really

here you go 233.4 GB = 250,656,219,136 BYTES that is 656 MB more than 250 BG, so the size report does not mean you are losing any thing.

[DMPDX]

Have you not read the thread?

I'm going to spell this out for you as simply as I can because it's obvious you haven't understood.

Product manufacturers use SI units to advertise HDD space. There is always a little disclaimer, and it is present on the Apple website and in the manual that the HDD manufacturer uses SI units, it will say something akin to "1GB = 1000 million bytes." That means that 500GB = 500 x 10^9 bytes or 500,000,000,000 bytes.

A computer, as a binary system works in powers of 2, not 10, so a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes etc.

So, you paid for 500,000,000,000 bytes:

500,000,000,000 bytes divided by 1024 = 488281250 kilobytes
488281250 kilobytes divided by 1024 = 476837.158203125 megabytes
476837.158203125 megabytes divided by 1024 = 465.66128730774 gigabytes

So, 500GB in SI units = 465.66GB in computer terms. You have exactly what you paid for. The 0.22GB difference between 465.66GB and your 465.44GB is formatting on the HDD.

I don't know how to make it any clearer for you, Yvan256 and Veldek also explain it perfectly.

You paid for a 500GB hard drive and got a 500GB hard drive, there is just a difference between what manufacturers and computers see as a gigabyte.
That explanation was god like. You should just know that.

[savar]

So what your saying is thats normal i payed for a 500 gb hard drive and got a 465.44 gb Hd ? Is there any one else with a so called 500 gb imac with 465.44 gb hd ? Or should i go to Mac and say WTF ?
:confused:

troll

[cr2sh]

troll

Hey dude.. I don't think it's cool to go around insulting people. First, the poor guy gets robbed by Apple's harddrive department.. and now you're calling him names.



:confused: :p

[slooksterPSV]

Consider this, when you buy a 1TB HDD you'll get only this amount of HDD Space: 931.32257461248 GB
That's a: 68.67742538752 difference from 1024GB = 1TB actual! But that's how they'll market it, soon they'll have to give actual I would think.

[web_god61]

I'm gonna go a different direction and say that I thought that a hard drive always kept a certain amount of space in reserve so that when clusters go bad it can switch out the bad cluster for a good one that is kept in reserve, wouldn't this explain why you dont loose hardrive spce as your drive deteriorates?

So 500GB - 465GB = 35GB reserve space.

Anyone know about this?

[unfaded]

I'm gonna go a different direction and say that I thought that a hard drive always kept a certain amount of space in reserve so that when clusters go bad it can switch out the bad cluster for a good one that is kept in reserve, wouldn't this explain why you dont loose hardrive spce as your drive deteriorates?

So 500GB - 465GB = 35GB reserve space.

Anyone know about this?

Given that the math has been done earlier in the thread and it matched up perfectly, I would have to say... no. However, for the sake of it, this is from wikipedia's entry on hard drives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk#Capacity_measurements ) I think you'll find the last paragraph will dispute your idea:

Hard drive manufacturers typically specify drive capacity using 'SI prefixes', that is, the SI definition of the prefixes "giga" and "mega." This is largely for historical reasons, since disk drive storage capacities exceeded millions of bytes [4] long before there were standard 'binary prefixes' (even before there were the SI prefixes, 1960). The IEC only standardized 'binary prefixes' in 1999. As it turned out, many practitioners early on in the computer and semiconductor industries adopted the term kilobyte to describe 210 (1024) bytes because 1024 is "close enough" to the metric prefix kilo, which is defined as 103 or 1000. Sometimes this non-SI conforming usage include a qualifier such as '"1 kB = 1,024 Bytes"' but this qualifier was frequently omitted, particularly in marketing literature. This trend became habit and continued to be applied to the prefixes "mega," "giga," and even "tera."

Operating systems and their utilities, particularly visual operating systems such as Microsoft's various Windows operating systems frequently report capacity using binary prefixes which results in a discrepancy between the drive manufacturer's stated capacity and the system's reported capacity. Obviously the difference becomes much more noticeable in reported capacities in the multiple gigabyte range, and users will often notice that the volume capacity reported by their OS is significantly less than that advertised by the hard drive manufacturer. For example, Microsoft's Windows 2000 reports drive capacity both in decimal to 12 or more significant digits and with binary prefixes to 3 significant digits. Thus a disk drive specified by a drive manufacturer as a '30 GB' drive has its capacity reported by Windows 2000 both as '30,065,098,568 bytes' and '28.0 GB'. The drive manufacturer has used the SI definition of "giga," 109 and can be considered as an approximation of a gibibyte. Since utilities provided by the operating system probably define a gigabyte as 230, or 1073741824, bytes, the reported capacity of the drive will be closer to 28.0 GB, a difference of well over 7%. For this very reason, many utilities that report capacity have begun to use the aforementioned IEC standard binary prefixes (e.g. KiB, MiB, GiB) since their definitions are unambiguous.

Many people mistakenly attribute the discrepancy in reported and specified capacities to reserved space used for file system and partition accounting information. However, for large (several GiB) filesystems, this data rarely occupies more than a few MiB, and therefore cannot possibly account for the apparent "loss" of tens of GBs.

[topicolo]

Hey dude.. I don't think it's cool to go around insulting people. First, the poor guy gets robbed by Apple's harddrive department.. and now you're calling him names.



:confused: :p
You can always show your solidarity by changing your signature from "20" iMac G5 - 2.1GHz - 2.5GB - 500GB" to "20" iMac G5 - 2.1GHz - 2.5GB - 465.44GB"

:D

[slooksterPSV]

You can always show your solidarity by changing your signature from "20" iMac G5 - 2.1GHz - 2.5GB - 500GB" to "20" iMac G5 - 2.1GHz - 2.5GB - 465.44GB"

:D
I've seen people complain about Macs saying "Why did OS X take away x GB from my HDD, it was supposed to be y" e.g. 40GB turns into 37.14, they complain they're missing 2.86GB and its Mac OS X's fault/Apple's fault. When Windows does the same thing. Macs show you the actual and used HDD space automatically when you login and see the Macintosh HDD icon. Windows, you have to traverse menu's and all that to get actual HDD space.

[savar]

I'm gonna go a different direction and say that I thought that a hard drive always kept a certain amount of space in reserve so that when clusters go bad it can switch out the bad cluster for a good one that is kept in reserve, wouldn't this explain why you dont loose hardrive spce as your drive deteriorates?

So 500GB - 465GB = 35GB reserve space.

Anyone know about this?

You're thinking of memory modules. Solid state memories usually have a little extra room because chip fabrication isn't a perfect science, and there's always a percentage of circuits that will fail. By including extra memory, chips that fail inspection can have bad areas removed (by blowing a fuse or something) and replaced with the backup. The extra cost is offset by the increased yield.

[dornoforpyros]

yeah my tibook has a 48gb drive, which with nothing but the OS installed shows up as 40gb, I imagine it was apple's small attempt at keeping people from asking this question.

[slooksterPSV]

yeah my tibook has a 48gb drive, which with nothing but the OS installed shows up as 40gb, I imagine it was apple's small attempt at keeping people from asking this question.
Let me ask this, does the same apply with Flash Memory? I can't remember, but I think it does. I bought a 256MB Card and I think it was 244MB actual.

*opens calculator*

Yup: 256MB = 244.140625 actual. So it does apply.

[Chundles]

Let me ask this, does the same apply with Flash Memory? I can't remember, but I think it does. I bought a 256MB Card and I think it was 244MB actual.

*opens calculator*

Yup: 256MB = 244.140625 actual. So it does apply.

The only thing I've not seen it apply to was RAM. When you buy RAM, both the packaging and the computer show the same amount.

[displaced]

You're thinking of memory modules. Solid state memories usually have a little extra room because chip fabrication isn't a perfect science, and there's always a percentage of circuits that will fail. By including extra memory, chips that fail inspection can have bad areas removed (by blowing a fuse or something) and replaced with the backup. The extra cost is offset by the increased yield.

The same is indeed true of hard drives. However, I believe any additional reserved space is not actually reflected as part of the drive's reported capacity.

It's what the 'I' in IDE stands for: Intelligent.

Many moons ago, hard disks were just dumb platters and heads. All the smarts were within the controller on the host computer. This would be responsible for (amongst other things) keeping a map of 'bad' clusters, and swapping-in spare healthy clusters. This function got moved onto the drive itself with the advent of IDE. Each drive leaves the factory with an internal record of bad areas and the additional areas to use in place of them.

This is all invisible to the operating system and also to the low-level software (BIOS, EFI, etc) which controls peripherals, and so is not shown in the figures reported to the user.

[jared_kipe]

troll
No ****, how does someone not know about this. This "problem" has been around for ever, and guess what, it even affects windows hard drives. Only Linux is safe. :rolleyes:

[slooksterPSV]

No ****, how does someone not know about this. This "problem" has been around for ever, and guess what, it even affects windows hard drives. Only Linux is safe. :rolleyes:
Linux? Yeah right =P it takes up more space by making different partitions that you don't even know are there such as /home/ or /tmp/ lol I know you're jk, but anyways, a lot of people don't know about this. New computer users are the only ones I would think that don't know about this.

[trknopnyc]

I received a "750GB" HD last week, and as could be calculated, it shows up as a whopping 689GB. Having a little bit disappear is annoying, but to see a claimed 60 gigs disappear from tricky math and marketing is almost bad marketing. Hopefully mfrs will begin to state "usable" GB. The whole concept reminds me of when I had to grasp the concept of having a 27" Television, with no single dimension of actually 27" usable...

-t

[kewpid]

I received a "750GB" HD last week, and as could be calculated, it shows up as a whopping 689GB. Having a little bit disappear is annoying, but to see a claimed 60 gigs disappear from tricky math and marketing is almost bad marketing. Hopefully mfrs will begin to state "usable" GB. The whole concept reminds me of when I had to grasp the concept of having a 27" Television, with no single dimension of actually 27" usable...

-t

It's not bad marketing, it's brilliant marketing - for the HD manufacturers anyway. From a purely semantic standpoint they are not technically lying to you. You are getting X billion bytes.

[Arnaud]

Anyway, what really matters is also that a HDD with "500Gb" is bigger than one with "250Gb" - that's what you go for, when you realize your "250Gb" is too small, and you need something "bigger".

The size of nowadays' HDDs is so big that you seldom go to buy a HDD with a clear idea in your head of how you want to fill it up to 240Gb or 250Gb. It might only happen with multiple partitions (Boot camp...), or heavy media files. And if I know I want to work on a total of 113Gb of raw video (practical example of my real need these days), I'll go for a HDD of at least twice that size, and I'll still think large above that number - because you need room to move a small cube inside of a big cube, that's my way of "seeing it", not even mentioning back-ups ! :p

Now, if you really find yourself at the point where 7% of your hard drive of "250Gb" makes a difference between "satisfied" (i.e., enough room) and "not satisfied" (i.e., HDD full to the brim), I'd suggest you get a "500Gb", which will be better and safer.

Of course, money is an issue too: if all you can decently afford is a "250Gb", then you have to make the most of it. But well, welcome to the world of HDD's, and it's the same everywhere, not only Apple - go for a walk in the next electronic's shop, read the fine print -.

Additionally, the "ram" is out of this topic, because the labels on the chips usually are "512Mb", "1024Mb" - which is less of an error -.

[cr2sh]

This thread is hilarious.

[hits unsubscribe]

[Arnaud]

This thread is hilarious.

[hits unsubscribe]

I can't help but think that this "humble" comment has been provoked by the last post of the thread, i.e., mine.

It's funny how people think other opinions can be hilarious.

The subject of the calculation of "the exact amount of bytes in 250Gb" etc is more than well-known, I just wanted to add a different "user's point of view", which is of what you buy in the end and for which purpose.

Regarding the amount of room for video, I know my calculation looks terrible, but try to work with iMovie: a first DV-file, with your video import, that you keep as a backup because you might have some troubles along the way (and that's the point of back-up); then a copy of the DV-file, which becomes your video project; so far, out of 15Gb for one DV-movie, you already need 30Gb - because iMovie copies everything in the file -. Make it for 10 similar movies, you need 300Gb of HDD. Then try to apply several effects on a strip, and you might need to process intermediate movies, to reintroduce on the project. Hence the additional space. NB: You can extract the DV file from a backup iMovie file, to lighten it up, but I haven't tried to replace it by a new DV-import, I'm not sure it fits.
Furthermore, with several drives, you need even more room if you plan to move files around. "Oh, let's move the backups to drive 2", and you need another 150Gb for the time of the operation only.

Regarding the safe capacity, you should not fill your HDD over 95%, this is well-known.

But well, it is all too hilarious. I guess it is just a different point of view.

[notjustjay]

I think the comment about the 27" TV is the best way to look at it. That went for CRT monitors, too, a 17" CRT monitor was actually perhaps only 15.8" along the diagonal, viewable, the rest was hidden under the plastic bezel.

That didn't stop the term '17" monitor' from being a convenient way to classify the product. You could have 17" monitors from Apple, NEC, Sony, Daiwoo, etc. None of them would actually give you 17" viewable diagonals (and in fact probably none of them even measured exactly the same on what you DID get). But they were all 17" monitors.

It's the same way with hard drives -- a 500 GB drive is twice as big as a 250 GB drive, and a Western Digital 500 GB is the same capacity as a Fujitsu 500 GB drive. It's a convenient way to classify the size of the drive relative to the sizes of other drives. Is it deceptive math? Sure. Does it really matter? Only if you were picky...

[Anonymous Freak]

Hello i just brought got my new imac payed gor 2 gb ram payed for the better graphics card got that to. Then i payed for the 500 gb Hd and got a 465.44gb Hard Drive a hitachi one? was i saposed to get this ? Im new to mac ? pleasse help and is it saposed to have a Pionner dvd-rw Please help me? have i gotten what i payed for?

You paid for a 500 GB* hard drive.

*'GB' is defined as one billion bytes

Normal people (and computers) refer to capacities in binary. 1 GB to the OS is really 1*1024*1024*1024 (2^30, or 1,073,741,824.) 1 GB to hard drive manufacturers is 1*1000*1000*1000 (10^9 or 1,000,000,000.) That's a 7.3% difference. So a '500 GB' hard drive should only be 463.5 binary GB anyway. (There is a movement to use different prefixes for 'binary bytes', basically you just add a lowercase 'i' between the prefix and the 'B'. So a '500 GB' hard drive would translate to a '463.5 GiB' hard drive. While it is more accurate, I think it's a stupid idea.)

So your hard drive 'should' be 463.5 GB. You're seeing 465.44 GB. You're actually ahead.

If you don't like the fact that it's not 'really 500 GB', complain to the hard drive manufacturers. They've advertised drives this way for years. (My first hard drive was a 40 MB drive. It only showed up as 38 MB. Then there was my 540 MB model that showed up as 514 MB; and my 6 GB drive that showed up as 5.6 GB. That's just the way hard drives work. Heck, on the latest 700 GB hard drives, you 'lose' 50 GB of capacity. That's almost as much as the Mac mini comes with! Not to mention that the companies generally just round off anyway. One manufacturer's '500 GB' drive may only really be 498.6, another's may really be 501.3.

Then there are manufacturing differences and bad sectors. Kind of like how early LCDs were guaranteed to have a bad pixel or two, and it was just taken for granted, hard drives are pretty much guaranteed to have a few bad sectors. These bad sectors take away from the usable space. Not to mention just plain manufacturing differences. I have three Toshiba MK4025GAS 2.5", '40 GB' hard drives. All three have slightly different formatted capacities. And my desktop Seagate 40 GB hard drive is likewise a different capacity. (It's actually a little OVER 40 binary GB!)

[notjustjay]

Ooh, here's another thought.

Don't they do this to you when you buy gasoline, too?

Here in Canada there are signs on the gas pumps that say "volume corrected to 15 degrees C". So, in warmer or colder weather, you might not actually be getting the exact number of liters of gas that you think you're paying for.

[Anonymous Freak]

Ooh, here's another thought.

Don't they do this to you when you buy gasoline, too?

Here in Canada there are signs on the gas pumps that say "volume corrected to 15 degrees C". So, in warmer or colder weather, you might not actually be getting the exact number of liters of gas that you think you're paying for.

Ouch. You guys already have to use undervalued C$, and smaller Litres, you also have to deal with that? Man, we get full gallons. The gasoline may shrink or expand in different temperatures, but you do get a full gallon (at present temperature.)

[dpaanlka]

Generic Dan Palka Vocabulary Correction Post:

"Mac" is not a company, and it's iMac, not Imac.

End of Post

[whocares]

Ooh, here's another thought.

Don't they do this to you when you buy gasoline, too?

Here in Canada there are signs on the gas pumps that say "volume corrected to 15 degrees C". So, in warmer or colder weather, you might not actually be getting the exact number of liters of gas that you think you're paying for.

That actually makes sense: you're paying for the amount of energy you pump (in Joules), not the volume of fluid. ;)

[NZEditer]

Mac" is not a company, and it's iMac, not Imac. lol i dont care k im not gonna call you a name tho thats uncalled for.

Thanks for all the info guys it helps alot im still trying to get what some of yous are saying but i get the point. Thanks again

cr2sh thanks for the support

Kind Regards Russel Crow

[dpaanlka]

lol i dont care k im not gonna call you a name tho thats uncalled for

I'd like you to show me when I called you a name.

[GFLPraxis]

I received a "750GB" HD last week, and as could be calculated, it shows up as a whopping 689GB. Having a little bit disappear is annoying, but to see a claimed 60 gigs disappear from tricky math and marketing is almost bad marketing. Hopefully mfrs will begin to state "usable" GB. The whole concept reminds me of when I had to grasp the concept of having a 27" Television, with no single dimension of actually 27" usable...

-t

The reality is, it's the same difference. Your 750 GB is exactly three times bigger than a 250 GB hard drive.

[deadkenny]

Maybe drop Steve Jobs a b**chin' e-mail: jobs@apple.com
[/COLOR]

That's the right email adress if you are seeking for an occupation at Apple Computer Inc. but surely not the right one if you want to blame the CEO :-)

500GB = 465GiB

There is nothing wrong with your Computer, it's just a conversion between different numerical bases. No way you can sue anyone, no way you get any money back. As said before GB is (officially) to base 10 and GiB is to base 2.

1 Giga (G) is 10^9 (10 in the power of nine) while one Gibi (Gi) is 2^30 (tow in the power of 30).

Like 1/4 Mile = 2/5 km - the same distance but different names and numbers. The only difference is that the names Giga (G) and Gibi (Gi) are way more similar.

There is an error in MacOS X though. They say your HD has 465GB which is wrong. It really has 500GB or 465GiB. So it should say 465GiB to be correct with the number.

[steve_hill4]

Ouch. You guys already have to use undervalued C$, and smaller Litres, you also have to deal with that? Man, we get full gallons. The gasoline may shrink or expand in different temperatures, but you do get a full gallon (at present temperature.)
Under different temperatures, the volume will change whether you pump petrolium in litres or gallons. In the UK we measure in litres too, but many still use gallons, we even measure in miles per gallon and litres per 100km. Since the liquid is pumped at approximately 15 degrees, you still are getting the same amount of fluid, whatever you measure in.

And while we pay a lot more in the UK, (which is good in my mind, discourages greedy, selfish people from driving and polluting), isn't the US dollar a lot weaker now than in previous years? Hell, the beloved Euro is so much stronger these days, and that was dirided by US economists for so many years. So when you start talking about undervalued currencies, remember that the US dollar is still weakening, so suggesting people pay more because of a weaker currency is ill-informed to say the least, as it appears you were trying to.

[steve_hill4]

yeah my tibook has a 48gb drive, which with nothing but the OS installed shows up as 40gb, I imagine it was apple's small attempt at keeping people from asking this question.
I can imagine since these were in such small production, they would be expensive to use. Apple did a good job, but I bet it hit them on costs and it would have been in part at least passed on to the consumer.

At the end of the day, computers deal with data in binary. It's the only language they truly understand. We deal with data in a regular, typing word documents way, this passes a series of programming commands through, which gets translated into machine code, which becomes binary, or 2^x. As explained, hard drives are measured in 10^x, where when x is each multiple of 3, it increases by 1000. In binary, this is each multiple of 10.

In order for a computer to process the information being passed to the memory, processor, graphics card, etc, it must be in binary. You could oversize the drives, (expensive manufacturing process more often than not), or quote in either binary or decimal. For tradition, it is quoted in decimal in bytes, not KB, MB or GB. So, they see how many bytes were manufactured and divide by 1000 for each multiple. The computer needs to work in binary, so the closest is indeed 1024. It seems like a con, but considering the alternatives, it's not that bad.

I advocate the usage of "500GB, (465.44GiB)" by manufacturers in the future.

[slooksterPSV]

This thread has somewhat drifted off. I like the direct comparison between 17" monitors and 500GB HDD. Also, if its in 1000's instead of 1024's then the normal user understands that they have 500GB based on 500 billion bytes where 1 billion bytes = 1GB. The same holds true, you purchased a 17" monitor and the casing is only as long as 1.2" so its still a 17" monitor in terms of size, but usability is only 15.8".

Take that into terms of HDD, if you had absolutely 500GB on a 500GB HDD, it wouldn't function because you write bits of data (0 and 1's : unraised and raised irrespecitvely). 8 bits = 1 byte, 1024 bytes = 1 kb, 1024 kb = 1mb, 1024 mb = 1gb, 1024gb = 1tb...etc.

If computers weren't in base 2, then computers wouldn't function. Microsoft's OS would crash as bad as Apple's OS due to parity errors and stuff like that. You write a 2 - 9 to any bit and the computer doesn't understand it. Any number between 2 and 9 is non-existant, it'd be like a survey. How do you rate this 0 - 9. Computers test true false : on off : set unset. So computers, using T/F methods, would read 2-9 as unknown, unknown, unknown, ... unknown - 1, unknown. Where only 1 and 0 would be recognized as an actual function - a certain key on or off.

--oh sorry, I mean if its raised or unraised, how do you rate 2-9 on a microscopic scale? We'd still have 500MB HDD due to the fact that it'd have to use more space to write 2-9 even thought those would cause parity errors.

---same with the flow of electricity: hmm since its flowing its 1, but its not as good as it should be so I give it a 5. Parity parity parity! YAY. Just kidding.

[slooksterPSV]

I just read through it again and it makes sense:
Base 2 for hard drives, to make marketing easier they base it off of 10s, but if it were actually based off of 10s you'd have 2-9 "survey" switches. By "survey" switches I mean how you take a survey and reate something 1-10. 0 is on 1 is off, but how do you rate 2? 3?
Electricity is another example, if its flowing, its a 1, if not, its a 0. What's 2? What's 3? and so on.

It compares how marketing, they put it in base 10 for hdd space instead of base 2 and how if it were base 10 instead of base 2, how bad it would mess up systems...wait wt heck does this have... I lost myself.... I dunno, it was... wow it was late huh? Darn you Slook, don't ever write things late at night.

[purelithium]

haha! that's funny! both of your posts are infected by the crazy logic! I won't even bother trying to interpret it, incase it infects me too, like a computer virus for the human brain!

[zephead]

Is it too crazy of an idea for hard drive makers to make drives that are 534.56 GB so the actual capacity would actually be 500 GiB?

[slooksterPSV]

Is it too crazy of an idea for hard drive makers to make drives that are 534.56 GB so the actual capacity would actually be 500 GiB?

Ok, we're talking about marketing: in other words: selling a product to a consumer who thinks its just the best, but in all actuality its missing some items to make it even worth while. Again in other words: smart marketing, stupid people

[zephead]

Ah, so all the hard drive makers are following the Microsoft marketing model? :D :p

[slooksterPSV]

Ah, so all the hard drive makers are following the Microsoft marketing model? :D :p
Not IBM, they're truthful honest.

[Arnaud]

Darn you Slook, don't ever write things late at night.

Uh, how many nights did you stay awake? I also wondered whether you were high or sleep-typing when sending the first post...

Is it too crazy of an idea for hard drive makers to make drives that are 534.56 GB so the actual capacity would actually be 500 GiB?

I'm not sure you can, it goes back to the way the disk is formatted. If I'm correct, it's like cutting a pie in (angular) slices, but also in concentric circles, so you end up with sectors at the intersections which look like slightly distorted rectangles.
From there, you can only increase the number of angular slices / concentric lines, so that the number of sectors increases by steps, and not one by one.
Conclusion: the number of Gb/GiB is kinda fixed by the construction options.

If anyone can confirm that...

[slooksterPSV]

Uh, how many nights did you stay awake? I also wondered whether you were high or sleep-typing when sending the first post...



I'm not sure you can, it goes back to the way the disk is formatted. If I'm correct, it's like cutting a pie in (angular) slices, but also in concentric circles, so you end up with sectors at the intersections which look like slightly distorted rectangles.
From there, you can only increase the number of angular slices / concentric lines, so that the number of sectors increases by steps, and not one by one.
Conclusion: the number of Gb/GiB is kinda fixed by the construction options.

If anyone can confirm that...
Sounds good to me.

[FoxyKaye]

Whenever I buy a Dell (or any preconfig'd PC), I wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall. Imagine my surprise when I find out that I wiped out the restore partition and the system didn't have a backup CD. Now you specifically have to request backup CD's. Otherwise, you are wasting valuable hard disk space.
Dell used to be a lot better about this sort of thing - I was also amazed to find a FAT (not even FAT32) partition on their Core Duo laptop. Though it seems they've been doing this for a while - I just haven't owned a Dell since 1997.

To the original poster: I know it seems a little odd if you're not familiar with how HDD space is advertised and actually used, but don't sweat the small stuff, just have fun. I've got a 400GB HDD on my iMac, and I don't think in more than a year I've managed to fill even 50% - and that's with a *lot* of apps, sound and video files.

[penter]

"AMAZING COMPUTER DEAL OF FREAKING AWESOMENESS BUY BUY BUY NOW!!!!!!one!!!!eleven"

lmao i love the "one...eleven" :D

[paperinacup]

I have a HUGE feeling there is going to be a class action lawsuit one day involving false advertisment and hard drives, ram, cd-r, dvd-r, etc.

[Arnaud]

I have a HUGE feeling there is going to be a class action lawsuit one day involving false advertisment and hard drives, ram, cd-r, dvd-r, etc.

Yeah, sure - the same day they'll sue Toys'R'Us for letting kids believe in Santa Claus :D

Honestly, the "worst" that could happen to the manufacturers is a law pushed by consumers' unions for the introduction of GiB or whatever, but a class action lawsuit...

[solvs]

I have a HUGE feeling there is going to be a class action lawsuit one day involving false advertisment and hard drives, ram, cd-r, dvd-r, etc.
Already been tried and failed. It clearly says something like "actual formatted capacity may be less". Sucks, but whatever, it's not that big of a deal. You'd still be buying a 465GB hdd.

[comictimes]

I'm not sure you can, it goes back to the way the disk is formatted. If I'm correct, it's like cutting a pie in (angular) slices, but also in concentric circles, so you end up with sectors at the intersections which look like slightly distorted rectangles.
From there, you can only increase the number of angular slices / concentric lines, so that the number of sectors increases by steps, and not one by one.
Conclusion: the number of Gb/GiB is kinda fixed by the construction options.

If anyone can confirm that...

heh that's an awesome analogy... took me a bit to get what you were saying but works perfectly. And yea I feel like that's right... they can't just make hard drives whatever size they want to.