Hard Drive Capacity

killuminati · Jun 11, 2005

I have two macs that are both BTO. I got my powerbook with an 80Gb HD, and an iMac with a 250Gb HD. My powerbook says that the hard drive capacity is only 74Gb and my iMac says that its capacity is only 233Gb.

So, my question is what happened to all the missing GB?!?

mad jew · Jun 11, 2005

Mainly the difference between bits and bytes from memory. Plus a little space for formatting maybe?

Platform · Jun 11, 2005

Formatting takes a bit.........but most of it is marketing.....

In One GIGABYTE there is 1024MB not 1000......so that is how...and the bigger the HDD there more you loose

reh · Jun 11, 2005

Because there's a discrepancy between how your OS measures drive space and how hard drive manufacturers and computer companies measure drive space.

It all boils down to the following:
1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes (well established in computer speak)
1 Kilobyte = 1000 bytes (according to drive manufacturers looking to inflate apparent drive sizes)

If you search I'm sure you'll find about 200 threads about this.

killuminati · Jun 11, 2005

Platform said:
Ahh, I get it now. It kind of is ripping u off a bit. With a 250Gb drive you end up getting 17 Gb less than what your expecting.

mad jew · Jun 11, 2005

reh said:
Because there's a discrepancy between how your OS measures drive space and how hard drive manufacturers and computer companies measure drive space.

It all boils down to the following:
1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes (well established in computer speak)
1 Kilobyte = 1000 bytes (according to drive manufacturers looking to inflate apparent drive sizes)

Thanks for that. I didn't realise it boiled down to that.

reh said:
If you search I'm sure you'll find about 200 threads about this.

I thought the same thing but I haven't been able to find one yet. There was one recently where the explanation was almost as concise as reh's and I was trying to find it but no luck.

killuminati · Jun 11, 2005

mad jew said:
I thought the same thing but I haven't been able to find one yet. There was one recently where the explanation was almost as concise as reh's and I was trying to find it but no luck.

Yea, I couldn't find any either or I wouldn't have posted. I wasn't even able to find one with MRoogle

reh · Jun 11, 2005

Here's a formula to convert "retail size" to "actual size." This assumes that the manufacturer is using 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (instead of 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes as they should).

Actual Drive Size = Retail Drive Size * 0.931

This formula is an approximation. Many times they'll round the drive size somewhat, but this gives you a rough idea of the real world space.

killuminati · Jun 11, 2005

reh said:
Here's a formula to convert "retail size" to "actual size."
Actual Drive Size = Retail Drive Size * 0.931

This formula is an approximation. Many times they'll round the drive size somewhat, but this gives you a rough idea of the real world space.

Thanks for that. I just tried that formula for a few different drives and that seems to be about right. It was never off by more than 1 gig.

StarbucksSam · Jun 12, 2005

I've found that a good general rule is to subtract 10%. I know on my old iMac's 60GB it was 55.89 or approx 7% lower.

On this 60GB it's 55.77 - same range.

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Hard Drive Capacity

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