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majorchestnut

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 21, 2010
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Bought the new 2010 MacBook Pro, and went for the 512GB SSD option. In Disk Utility/System Profiler, it's reporting a capacity of 500.28GB under Snow Leopard. Is this normal?
 
Bought the new 2010 MacBook Pro, and went for the 512GB SSD option. In Disk Utility/System Profiler, it's reporting a capacity of 500.28GB under Snow Leopard. Is this normal?

The OS takes up some space right? :rolleyes: However, 12GB seems like too much.


Isn't there a few different "standards" to calculate space. Like binary and something else I can't think of?
 
Marketing hype. For capacity advertising, they count 1000MB = 1GB. For purposes of calculation in OS X, 1024MB = 1GB.

500 x 1.024 = 512
 
The OS takes up some space right? :rolleyes: However, 12GB seems like too much.


Isn't there a few different "standards" to calculate space. Like binary and something else I can't think of?

That is perfectly normal and it's not the OS taking up space. There are different standards or methods use to count a GB. OS X probably counts it different than the drive manufacturer. Most drives will say in the drive specs as to how a GB is calculated 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes.

I have a 128 GB Runcore SSD in my MBA and it shows up as 128 GB. However, the stock SSD only showed up as 120.9 GB. The larger the drive, the larger the discrepancy is going to be as it can be calculated as a percentage of the drive space.

This is truly a "Not to worry" moment. BTW OP, is it Apple's 512 GB SSD? How is it in terms of speed? Have you run an xBenchmarking test on it to see the read/write performance of the SSD?

Congrats on the nice computer!
 
Marketing hype. For capacity advertising, they count 1000MB = 1GB. For purposes of calculation in OS X, 1024MB = 1GB.

500 x 1.024 = 512

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard uses the "capacity advertising" method of calculation. My 500GB hard disk shows up as a 500 or 499.something GB hard disk.

So I must say I'm surprised at what the OP is finding.
 
Bought the new 2010 MacBook Pro, and went for the 512GB SSD option. In Disk Utility/System Profiler, it's reporting a capacity of 500.28GB under Snow Leopard. Is this normal?

They say 512 but you probably have software and stuff that is taking up space. But i don't know. Go get it checked out at Apple.
 
That is perfectly normal and it's not the OS taking up space. There are different standards or methods use to count a GB. OS X probably counts it different than the drive manufacturer. Most drives will say in the drive specs as to how a GB is calculated 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes.

Believe it or not, this isn't marketing hype.... way back in the early days of hard drives, the international sizing standard stated that 1 KB = 1000 bytes, and 1 MB=1000 KB. Disk standards are different from RAM (memory)

Your drive is fine, enjoy!
 
They say 512 but you probably have software and stuff that is taking up space. But i don't know. Go get it checked out at Apple.

500GB is the capacity, the maximum amount you can store. You're describing remaining which is what is left over with software and data on it.
 
OP.

Click on the apple on the top left menu bar.

Click on about this mac.

Click on More Info


On the left pane click on Serial-ATA | in the right pane you should see your drive listed.

Please select / highlight & copy and paste the info here. We will be able to tell you if it is the SSD or a HDD.
 
My 128gb ssd on had 120gb capacity, plus all the OS (and windoze) files take ~10Gb when it's all said and done.
 
Sorry for the late response guys:

Yes, it's Apple's 512 SSD option. No benchmarks run yet, but very, very fast in everyday use (near instant startup, iTunes runs superbly well now when adding music/movies)

I know there was much debate in the past about a 500GB hard drive being reported as less in the OS, but I thought I'd pose this question anyways because since I upgraded to Snow Leopard on my last MBP, my 640 or 750GB hard drives were actually reported as 640/750GB under disk utility. Thought it was odd that it'd be different again for SSDs.

I'll post screenshots when I get off work.
 
My 128gb ssd on had 120gb capacity, plus all the OS (and windoze) files take ~10Gb when it's all said and done.

same here. i can understand if theres less space than the advertised but why is it actually MORE than the advertised?? wouldnt the companies want to advertise more?
 
It's the same thing as that my 1tb Harddrive shows only 936gb, and not 1000gb/1tb.
 
Here's what I'm seeing...
 

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Um... you guys are all wrong here...

SSDs keep some space not usable for reliability purposes. If one sector the SSD is worn too much or damaged or whatever, it will use that reserve to make up for the space. Therefore, a 128GB SSD is actually a 120GB (Counted as 1000) or 111GB (Counted as 1024). 512GB is 500GB (Counted as 1000) or 465GB (Counted as 1024).

Intel SSDs does not use this count. On a Intel SSD, a 80GB is really 80GB. However, if you were to dissect it a little, you'll find it's more like 86GB.

This type of branding is totally up to the manufacturer.

For conventional hard drives, it's just the numbering issue. A 1TB drive is 1TB when counted as 1000 but only 931GB when counted as 1024. 500GB is 465GB, etc.
 
Yeah, it's like if you have an iPod with flash memory, a 4GB is roughly 3.6, and my 8GB touch actually holds 7.08. Flash memory is typically that way.
 
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