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nkbish0p

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 8, 2012
7
0
Hi guys. Could someone with the 128gb Macbook Pro Retina please tell me how much of the 128gb drive is available for use by the user ie. how much space is left once the OS etc. is installed. Also I'm presuming the figure for the Macbook Air will be very similar?

Cheers.
 
M

mg84

macrumors newbie
Dec 4, 2013
9
0
I've got the 256Gb and it says 250Gb... probably won't be that much a difference between the 128 and 256...
 
R

raptor402

macrumors 6502
Jun 30, 2011
399
2
mg84 said:
I've got the 256Gb and it says 250Gb... probably won't be that much a difference between the 128 and 256...
Click to expand...

Well, that's weird. I'm pretty sure that the footprint of OS X is larger than that. I recall that the 128GB Air had around 95GB of available space. But then again, that was way back during the reign of Snow Leopard (Late 2010 MBA).

Regards
Raptor

EDIT: I'm running Mavericks on my mid-2010 15" MBP. My System's folder is 5.5GB and Library folder is 2.5GB. System applications should be another GB or so. But I suppose 250GB should be a close estimation.
 
CheesePuff

CheesePuff

macrumors 65816
Sep 3, 2008
1,445
1,553
Southwest Florida, USA
raptor402 said:
Well, that's weird. I'm pretty sure that the footprint of OS X is larger than that. I recall that the 128GB Air had around 95GB of available space. But then again, that was way back during the reign of Snow Leopard (Late 2010 MBA).

Regards
Raptor

EDIT: I'm running Mavericks on my mid-2010 15" MBP. My System's folder is 5.5GB and Library folder is 2.5GB. System applications should be another GB or so. But I suppose 250GB should be a close estimation.
Click to expand...

I think mg84 meant 250 GB is whats available after its formatted. Then subtract another 10 GB of so for the base system and core app installs.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
nkbish0p said:
Hi guys. Could someone with the 128gb Macbook Pro Retina please tell me how much of the 128gb drive is available for use by the user ie. how much space is left once the OS etc. is installed. Also I'm presuming the figure for the Macbook Air will be very similar?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Once the drive is formatted it will have about 120GB of usable space. Then a normal OS X install with iWorks and iLife apps added uses about 20GB. So the answer to your question is you will have about 100GB of user space left for your own files/data.
 
R

raptor402

macrumors 6502
Jun 30, 2011
399
2
CheesePuff said:
I think mg84 meant 250 GB is whats available after its formatted. Then subtract another 10 GB of so for the base system and core app installs.
Click to expand...

Right. I forgot the recovery partition. Also, OS X displays data size as decimal, so a 256GB SSD, which is actually 256 billion Bytes or roughly 232 Giga Bytes, remains 256GB.

So around 4GB for the recovery partition and, as noted above, 20GB for OS X + bundled application suites.
 
Last edited:
R

raptor402

macrumors 6502
Jun 30, 2011
399
2
MacUser2525 said:
Recovery partition is 650 mb unless you let Carbon Copy Cloner duplicate it for you then you end up with 784mb.
Click to expand...

That's all? I'm surprised. I was pretty sure that it would be about the size of an OS X install disk/image. Nevertheless, around 100GB would be the answer the OP is looking for.

Raptor
 
P

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,038
641
Estonia
raptor402 said:
That's all? I'm surprised. I was pretty sure that it would be about the size of an OS X install disk/image.
Click to expand...
tuaw.com said:
The Recovery boot volume is read-only, and has a very limited set of files and features. You're actually running from the system image stored in BaseSystem.dmg, which gets mounted by the startup executables inside the com.apple.recovery.boot directory.
Click to expand...
Source
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
raptor402 said:
That's all? I'm surprised. I was pretty sure that it would be about the size of an OS X install disk/image.
Click to expand...

It is different than Windows systems that have the entire OS on a hidden partition. All the 650MB recovery partition has is some troubleshooting tools and a utility that allows download of the ~5GB OS from Apple's servers.
 
MacUser2525

MacUser2525

Suspended
Mar 17, 2007
2,097
377
Canada
raptor402 said:
Well colour me surprised. I was clearly misinformed on this topic, having never really used the recovery partition.

Raptor
Click to expand...

Really probably better off not using it. Apple's servers just plain suck for an internet recovery unless you enjoy looking at a progress screen for literally hours on end. I am on a fiber optic connection and that is what I end up with using it, so I gave up on that idea ever again now just use the usb installer I made if I ever need to reload/rescue a system.
 
P

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,038
641
Estonia
raptor402 said:
... having never really used the recovery partition.
Click to expand...
Well, even if in no need to install OS from scratch, you might want to use it to check and repair your boot disk. Or restore a password.
MacUser2525 said:
Really probably better off not using it. Apple's servers just plain suck for an internet recovery unless you enjoy looking at a progress screen for literally hours on end.
Click to expand...
They are actually Akamai's servers. I am on fiber too and have never experienced the pain you describe (well I never download new releases within first 24 rush hours obviously). The OS X install image (4..5GB) downloads within minutes.
But Akamai's distribution network is heavily spread geographically, AFAIK.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
MacUser2525 said:
Really probably better off not using it. Apple's servers just plain suck for an internet recovery unless you enjoy looking at a progress screen for literally hours on end. I am on a fiber optic connection and that is what I end up with using it, so I gave up on that idea ever again now just use the usb installer I made if I ever need to reload/rescue a system.
Click to expand...

It may be a regional problem where you live. I have always been able to completely saturate my 30Mbps connection with these updates. Heck, I even installed Mavericks on the afternoon it was released and got a full speed download.
 
MacUser2525

MacUser2525

Suspended
Mar 17, 2007
2,097
377
Canada
Weaselboy said:
It may be a regional problem where you live. I have always been able to completely saturate my 30Mbps connection with these updates. Heck, I even installed Mavericks on the afternoon it was released and got a full speed download.
Click to expand...

Apparently they could care less about Canada then I'm on 80mbs and lucky if any Apple update uses a tenth of the connection.
 
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