Available HD space...not so good!

[fitinferno]

I searched the forums to find similar posts and was unsuccessful. Sorry if this is a topic that has been discussed before.

I got my PB about 2-3 weeks ago. Now, I've had many a harddrive in the past, however, none have made me feel this ripped off. On my 80gig external, I have about 74 usable gigs. On my old computer, which was a 60gb hd, I had about 54 usable gigs. However, on this computer, which is a 100gb hd, I had only 85 usable gigs??

I understand that I would lose some gbs due to the whole byte math problem, but this is ridiculous, imo. I would expect 90 at least.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Such as, if you have a 100gigger in your computer, what amount of that was available when you turned on your comp for the first time? I.e. is this common and is this something I really should feel ripped off over?

 

[Bear]

Well, 100GB (100*10^9) is a tad over 93GB (93.1*1024^3) so that explains some. As for the rest, are you looking at free space? or total usable space?


Remember the system comes loaded with software that chew up several gigs.

 

[fitinferno]

It definitely comes out around 93gb as total space...

But still, I would've thought that 3gb for what the computer is loaded with would be enough...not 8. 8 seems very high...

 

[Bear]

It definitely comes out around 93gb as total space...

But still, I would've thought that 3gb for what the computer is loaded with would be enough...not 8. 8 seems very high...

iLife is about 5 gigs. iDVD and Garageband make up the bulk of that.

So 8 gigs seems about right.

 

[CanadaRAM]

It definitely comes out around 93gb as total space...

But still, I would've thought that 3gb for what the computer is loaded with would be enough...not 8. 8 seems very high...

So your complaint is -- Apple put too much OS and applications on your drive??

Run DeLocalizer (available from versiontracker.com) and recover 900 Mb.
Delete the iApps and fonts you don't want.
Some of the space is swap space for your RAM.

I'm sure others will have more suggestions...

 

[jemeinc]

Yeah, my 160Gb has about 145 useable. I've always found that to be a little bit tough to swallow as well. I just kind of blow it off, but I do agree with you it seems high. Oh well, I guess that's the price we pay for having Panther and the iLife apps- which I'm not willing to give up.

 

[yellow]

Yeah, my 160Gb has about 145 useable.

Do you really feel like 4GB for OS and Specialty apps is a rip off?
Considering it's like 2.7% of your drive's (actual) capacity (149GB)?

EDIT: Sorry, "rip off" is a bit strong..

 

[jemeinc]

Do you really feel like 4GB for OS and Specialty apps is a rip off?
Considering it's like 2.7% of your drive's (actual) capacity (149GB)?

EDIT: Sorry, "rip off" is a bit strong..

I wasn't the one who said rip off- I'm not the original poster. Not sure where the 4GB came from, but I do think it's reasonable to question 15 GB disappearing right from the get go. But like I said, if that's what Panther and the iLife apps require, that's fine with me.

 

[yellow]

I wasn't the one who said rip off- I'm not the original poster. Not sure where the 4GB came from, but I do think it's reasonable to question 15 GB disappearing right from the get go. But like I said, if that's what Panther and the iLife apps require, that's fine with me.

I know it wasn't you, hence the edit I placed in my post. Didn't mean to target you specificly with 'rip off'.

However, if you have 145GB of free space on a 160GB drive (manufacturer's label as 160GB), then the ACTUAL space you have on the drive is 149GB. So, 149GB-145GB=4GB of disk space actually used up.

Manufacturers simply call a drive with 160,000,000,000 bytes a 160GB drive, when it's not. But 160GB sounds better then 149GB.

 

[jemeinc]

Yeah, I understand enough about the whole HD space labeling thing to know that I don't understand it.... lol..

 

[yellow]

Yeah, I understand enough about the whole HD space labeling thing to know that I don't understand it.... lol..

You didn't ask, but I'll tell anyways..

The problem is in how the math is done.

In binary a kilobyte is 1024 bytes. A megabyte is 1024 kilobytes. A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes. Etc..

So a drive the manufacturer sells a 160GB drive, which is actually a drive with (around) 160,000,000,000 bytes. The math above yields 149GB of actual size.

149 = (((160,000,000,000/1024)/1024)/1024)

 

[fitinferno]

Yeah, in my original post I did put down about the whole byte math.

I guess I take issue with the fact that they should just put down what they mean by 100gb...eg. just tell me I'm getting 93. I'd rather have that than them just assuming I know that I'm getting 93 due to the byte math.

Anyways, I guess rip off is too strong a word I suppose, as I do like the iLife apps, but still, I guess I'm just putting too much thought into comparisons with my previous Mac. Makes me glad I went w/the 100gig one!