999.86 Gb <> 1 Tb

[clayj]

So a lot of fuss was made about how Snow Leopard was going to show us the "true" sizes of HDs. And in Disk Utility, it does show a 1 TB drive as 1 TB.

But on my desktop, my 1 TB drives are showing up as 999.86 GB in size, presumably because a small part of the 1 TB gets used for partition information. What I want to know is: Is there a way to get Snow Leopard to actually show "1 TB" on hard drives on the desktop?

 

[sidewinder]

So a lot of fuss was made about how Snow Leopard was going to show us the "true" sizes of HDs. And in Disk Utility, it does show a 1 TB drive as 1 TB.

But on my desktop, my 1 TB drives are showing up as 999.86 GB in size, presumably because a small part of the 1 TB gets used for partition information. What I want to know is: Is there a way to get Snow Leopard to actually show "1 TB" on hard drives on the desktop?

The Finder shows the actually usable capacity of the drive for the OS. Do you want it to lie??

S-

 

[cmaier]

Is the OP Monk?

 

[clayj]

No, I don't want it to "lie", per se. But I would appreciate it if for the sake of appearances, it could round up. The number we're seeing now is like $999.86 -- let's just say that you might as well say that's $1,000. Obviously it should not ever lie about the amount of free space, but there's no harm in a little fudging the total space if it makes for a nicer appearance on the screen.

 

[maflynn]

You do know that in addition to the base2 vs. base 10 confusion that has gone on for years, that a formatting a drive actually consumes some space.

So while apple has embraced base 10 with snow leopard, you still won't see a full 1TB space on a drive simply because formatting the drive places data structures for the OS to actually use the drive.

 

[OllyW]

I've noticed on my system, one HD is shown as 1TB and the other 999.86GB.



They are both Western Digital My Book drives, one is FW800 and the other is USB and plugged into my AEBS.

 

[glavoie84]

Don't forget about the EFI partition that takes ~200MB out of your 1TB. The rest is probably taken by the filesystem overhead.

 

[clayj]

Yes, yes. I get all that. But as Olly pointed out, 10.6 *can* show a 1 TB drive as 1 TB. I just wish that Apple engineered the OS to be smart enough to look at a drive that it *knows* is 1 TB and then say, "Well, I'm going to show it as 1 TB, even though the formatted capacity is a tiny percentage less."

 

[cmaier]

Yes, yes. I get all that. But as Olly pointed out, 10.6 *can* show a 1 TB drive as 1 TB. I just wish that Apple engineered the OS to be smart enough to look at a drive that it *knows* is 1 TB and then say, "Well, I'm going to show it as 1 TB, even though the formatted capacity is a tiny percentage less."

But why? Then if I tried to store 100 10-GB files on the drive, I'd be shocked and dismayed when the last file didn't fit, and would run to my Congressman and complain.

The last thing I want is for the OS to lie to me - it should tell me precisely how much space is available, and that's all.

What you're asking for reminds me of the old days with floppy disks and software compression. DOS/Windows would guesstimate how much disk space was left, and you never quite knew when you would run out.

 

[clayj]

But why? Then if I tried to store 100 10-GB files on the drive, I'd be shocked and dismayed when the last file didn't fit, and would run to my Congressman and complain.

The last thing I want is for the OS to lie to me - it should tell me precisely how much space is available, and that's all.

What you're asking for reminds me of the old days with floppy disks and software compression. DOS/Windows would guesstimate how much disk space was left, and you never quite knew when you would run out.

If you tried to store 10 100 GB files on the drive given that the free space was reported as less than 1 TB, then you'd have no one but yourself to blame. I'm not asking for the free space to be a lie -- I'm asking for the total space, which is a number of no real import, to be streamlined a bit.

 

[sidewinder]

If you tried to store 10 100 GB files on the drive given that the free space was reported as less than 1 TB, then you'd have no one but yourself to blame. I'm not asking for the free space to be a lie -- I'm asking for the total space, which is a number of no real import, to be streamlined a bit.

Then someone would complain that they had an empty drive that said it was 1TB but only had 999.86GB of free space. They'd want to know what happened to the .14GB.....

S-

 

[Richard1028]

I just wish that Apple engineered the OS to be smart enough to look at a drive that it *knows* is 1 TB and then say, "Well, I'm going to show it as 1 TB, even though the formatted capacity is a tiny percentage less."

I can always get a good laugh here at MR.

What did you do all these years when your mac showed gigabytes less than what it was advertised as? Now you want OSX to pull 200mb out of somebody's arse and add it to your drive capacity just so it looks "round" and pretty?

Some of you people have way to much time on your hands. I'm surprised you get anything useful done on your macs.

 

[clayj]

I can always get a good laugh here at MR.

What did you do all these years when your mac showed gigabytes less than what it was advertised as? Now you want OSX to pull 200mb out of somebody's arse and add it to your drive capacity just so it looks "round" and pretty?

Yes, Richard. That's exactly what I want.

Back before 10.6, everyone understood that the total space would show as less than advertised because of the difference in how numbers were used by hard drive marketing people and programmers. Neither the OS itself, nor even Disk Utility, would EVER show a drive as 1 TB and everyone knew that.

But now one *part* of 10.6 shows the drive capacity as 1 TB (Disk Utility) and another does not. Apple made a big deal out of this change, actually, and I even recall seeing a screenshot somewhere where someone's drive showed as "1 TB" in the Finder. Yes, I understand that once the drive has partition information written to it, the space available for the logical drive is slightly less than 1 TB. What I am requesting is a visual embellishment -- "1 TB" looks better than "999.86 GB" and there is no real reason why Apple can't adjust the OS to recognize the 0.14 GB difference and say "Eh, I can round this up to 1 TB and it won't hurt anyone." And you know what? IT WON'T HURT ANYONE.

 

[techfreak85]

wow u have a similar tech OCD as me.

i wish drives were manufactured so they could say 1 TB exactly.

 

[Richard1028]

What I am requesting is a visual embellishment -- "1 TB" looks better than "999.86 GB" and there is no real reason why Apple can't adjust the OS to recognize the 0.14 GB difference

Ok, let's say some loon at Apple complies with your request... or you save Steve Jobs from a speeding bus at the crosswalk... whatever...

What are you going to do when that drive finally says "1 TeraByte"? Look at it? Admire it ? Never use it? The first file you throw at it will screw it up by your standards.

and I even recall seeing a screenshot somewhere where someone's drive showed as "1 TB" in the Finder.

Is that all you want? Just highlight your drive, press enter and rename it.

It's no freaking wonder I sound stupid when defending the mac community when I'm with my Windows pals.

 

[clayj]

Richard, you've missed the point entirely. I'm not talking about the "free space" figure, which of course is going to fluctuate all over the place. I'm talking about the "TOTAL space" figure, which remains constant. I have FOUR 1 TB hard drives in my Mac Pro and they ALL say "999.86 GB" for the total space figure -- I'd like for them to say 1 TB instead.

I think the real reason you "sound stupid", as you already admitted you have, is that you don't pay attention to what people say before spouting off.

 

[cmaier]

Richard, you've missed the point entirely. I'm not talking about the "free space" figure, which of course is going to fluctuate all over the place. I'm talking about the "TOTAL space" figure, which remains constant. I have FOUR 1 TB hard drives in my Mac Pro and they ALL say "999.86 GB" for the total space figure -- I'd like for them to say 1 TB instead.

I think the real reason you "sound stupid", as you already admitted you have, is that you don't pay attention to what people say before spouting off.

I think your idea would only compound the problem. The disk space should be base 2, not base 10. Making it base 10 and ROUNDING it only reinforces the lie that the hard drive makers have told all these years. Instead, make the hard drive makers tell the truth about disk capacities.

And don't give me the kibi byte nonsense. Computer engineers and computer scientists knew that bytes are counted in base 2 for decades before the standards bodies tried to foist their nonsense on us.

 

[3247]

I can't stand this "marketing lie" b/s any longer.

Hard drive manufacturers are not lying. "Base 10" is the correct way to use these standardised prefixes. Hard drive manufacturers never used anything else; they did not switch at all, especially not for marketing.

It's the memory manufacturers who lie—and operating systems prior to Snow Leopard.

 

[Richard1028]

I have FOUR 1 TB hard drives in my Mac Pro and they ALL say "999.86 GB" for the total space figure -- I'd like for them to say 1 TB instead.

But my point still stands... exactly *what* will you do with this information? What did you do under previous OS's when you pressed CMD+I and it reported a capacity of 936 GB (or whatever)? What change has Apple forced you to make because of this 200mb non-issue?

 

[cmaier]

I can't stand this "marketing lie" b/s any longer.

Hard drive manufacturers are not lying. "Base 10" is the correct way to use these standardised prefixes. Hard drive manufacturers never used anything else; they did not switch at all, especially not for marketing.

It's the memory manufacturers who lie—and operating systems prior to Snow Leopard.

You are absolutely wrong. From the first moment kilobyte was used, 50 years ago, it was 1024 bytes. The supposed standard wasn't promulgated until the late nineties. Computer engineers still use base 2. The "kilo" is reserved argument is faulty; by that argument there should be 10 bits in a byte.

In 10 years no one has paid attention to kibibyte, and no one ever will.

 

[pol0001]

I can't stand this "marketing lie" b/s any longer.

It's the memory manufacturers who lie—and operating systems prior to Snow Leopard.

Actually, you are wrong. I still remember my first computer class in school. (DOS 5.0 and WORKS 2.6) Back than we had to learn that 1024 byte form 1 kilo byte and so forth.

1 byte=8 bits
1 kilobyte(kb)=1024 bytes
1 megabyte(mb)=1024 kilobytes
1 gigabyte(gb)=1024 megabytes
1 TERABYTE (TB)= 1024 gigabytes

 

[Neotyguy40]

Ok, this is getting ridiculous.

Does it truly matter if it shows the total space rather than the free space? Really?

And if it was the opposite way, would it truly matter if if showed free space rather than the total space? Really?

Jeez, I know that Macs are for people that like clean looking computers... But there is a line that I see people cross too many times...

So that's the question, does it truly matter one way or the other?

1. Are you going to die because of it? No.
2. Are you going to get sick from it? No.
3. Will it hamper any of your abilities at all when using the computer? No.

 

[electroshock]

I've noticed on my system, one HD is shown as 1TB and the other 999.86GB.

They are both Western Digital My Book drives, one is FW800 and the other is USB and plugged into my AEBS.

If they're both the same drive model, then that does suggest the controller may play a role into this issue in some way.

 

[sidewinder]

If they're both the same drive model, then that does suggest the controller may play a role into this issue in some way.

No, it does not. The drive reports the capacity to the system, whether it is accessed via USB or SATA.

S-

 

[Wotan31]

So a lot of fuss was made about how Snow Leopard was going to show us the "true" sizes of HDs. And in Disk Utility, it does show a 1 TB drive as 1 TB.

But on my desktop, my 1 TB drives are showing up as 999.86 GB in size, presumably because a small part of the 1 TB gets used for partition information. What I want to know is: Is there a way to get Snow Leopard to actually show "1 TB" on hard drives on the desktop?

LMAO you can't be serious. This thread = FAIL.