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148gb but only 130gb available?

zblaxberg

zblaxberg

Guest
Original poster
I got a 160 gb hard drive. Is the operating system really taking up 12gb or 18gb of space? What's going on here? I don't have anything installed except adium and firefox!! 😕

edit: is there anything I can take off? I just got the macbook pro today...
 
The default OS X installation takes up about 20 GB due to all of the bundled software. Printer drivers, GarageBand loops, and iDVD themes are some of the major space hogs.

You can delete some of these things if you want, but you might want to give some of the apps a try even if you don't think you're want them. You've got a nice big drive for your laptop, so it may not be crucial that you free up the space.
 
zblaxberg said:
I got a 160 gb hard drive. Is the operating system really taking up 12gb or 18gb of space? What's going on here? I don't have anything installed except adium and firefox!! 😕
Click to expand...

Garageband, extra languages, things like that.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13503
This link above is for the application DeLocalizer, it gets rid of the extra langauages.

Garageband has loops installed in there, that takes up a few gigs as well.
 
Since you just got your system, it's easy to install fresh from the included installation DVD. When you see the window that says "Easy Install", click it and pick "Custom". You'll be given the chance to deselect many languages and printer drivers, as well as iLife pieces and iWork trial versions. All in all, you can save maybe 6 GB or so (just an estimate). I just did this recently for other reasons.
 
The maximum usable capacity for ANY 160GB hard drive is 148GB. That is not a Mac or Windows thing. For a rough estimate of usable capacity multiply the labeled amount by 93%. For example a 500GB hard drive has 465GB usable capacity.
 
I've used Monolingual and it'll free up around 1-2GB of space by deleting languages you do not want. I also suggest going into font manager and deleting doubles of fonts you've got and going under username/library/printers and trashing the majority of the printer drivers there that you likely won't use. If anything, when you buy a printer, it includes the drivers on cd so you can re-install them as the need arises.
 
carlos700 said:
The maximum usable capacity for ANY 160GB hard drive is 148GB. That is not a Mac or Windows thing. For a rough estimate of usable capacity multiply the labeled amount by 93%. For example a 500GB hard drive has 465GB usable capacity.
Click to expand...

Not quite - the maximum available space for a 160GB drive is just as it says ... 160GB.

It's just that hard drive manufacturers count 1GB=1000x1000x1000 bytes, while software counts 1GB=1024x1024x1024 bytes.

Either way, the capacity is exactly the same ... you don't "lose" any disk space.
 
My new MBP is going to get here soon!!!! Just wondering how long it take when you put the osx disk in and costume install it?
 
Not my thread but thanks for the language remover and printer suggestions.. I just saved about 1.1gb because of it, and thats pretty big for 30gb iBook.

Btw- I kept the HP Printer folder, and kept all english (Aussie and Brit, American is kept by default with Delocalizer)
 
Hey, just wanted to say thanks! After reading this thread I ran delocalizer and it freed up over 3 Gigs of space. Cool. 🙂

Next I'm going to go after those print drivers...
 
plinden said:
Not quite - the maximum available space for a 160GB drive is just as it says ... 160GB.

It's just that hard drive manufacturers count 1GB=1000x1000x1000 bytes, while software counts 1GB=1024x1024x1024 bytes.

Either way, the capacity is exactly the same ... you don't "lose" any disk space.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's correct. The 500GB drive formats to around 465 GB. If what you said was right, the number would be 488 GB.
 
can you delete printer drivers without having to do a clean install? is there any advantage of doing a clean install?

oh, off topic... but in the "custom" installer menu... what is "X11"?
 
akadmon said:
I don't think that's correct. The 500GB drive formats to around 465 GB. If what you said was right, the number would be 488 GB.
Click to expand...

No, this has been discussed dozens of times in the past. 500 GigaBytes = 465 GibiBytes.

Just, no one uses gibibytes. Hence the confusion.

Samwise592 said:
oh, off topic... but in the "custom" installer menu... what is "X11"?
Click to expand...

It's the X server. It's not used so much now, but it's needed for many unix->OS X ports. Like OpenOffice.
 
Samwise592 said:
can you delete printer drivers without having to do a clean install? is there any advantage of doing a clean install?

oh, off topic... but in the "custom" installer menu... what is "X11"?
Click to expand...

yes you can. Go to Macintosh HD->Library->Printers-> then delete all those folders for the printers you do not use.

I got rid of a 1 gig worth of printer drivers doing that.
 
If you're really cramped on space you can get rid of the OSX desktop backgrounds you don't use. but it's only like 300 Mb or so.. So I guess you'd have to be really cramped on space.
 
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