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Confused About Installation Message. Please Help.

Pukey

Pukey

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 7, 2008
424
1
Gekkostate
I just got my new MBP and was attempting to reinstall Leopard. (10.5.2 is on my computer as well as the discs that were shipped with it.) When attempting to reinstall at the part just after I select the hard drive I get this message: "...You cannot upgrade this version of Mac OS X." Is this normal? What is that message supposed to mean? Certainly I can upgrade to a future version even if I choose to reinstall the current version at the moment? I called AppleCare and the lady I talked to seemed stumped as well. At least she admitted she had never heard of it. Any suggestions? I'm afraid to go through with a reinstall at the moment. Does the message simply mean more specifically "There is no upgrade available at the moment because I have the latest version"?
Also, on a side note, I know the OS takes up a bit of space but I ordered with the stock 250GB HDD and it says I have 214GB available out of a total of 232GB. Shouldn't the total be 250GB?
Thanks!
 

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Well, you could have the OS installed on your comp, therefore taking up that space on your HD, and it could also result in the installation process telling you that you cannot install it because it is already there.

The question you want to ask yourself: Can I still access my OS (Like, do I need to install Leopard again before I can get on my computer?)

If you can log on, it is already installed, and I think you would need to uninstall it before trying to install it, but I am not too sure.

Could someone verify this?
 
It means that you already have the same or newer version of OS X installed. In this case you already have 10.5 and that is what this disk has.

You can only have one OS X install per partition so if there is an existing install the install disk can only upgrade what is already there.

What you need to do:
Look in the lower left corner there and you see a button for options. Click it and choose either "Archive and install" which will save all of your data and old system to a folder before installing or "erase and install" which erases the disk and then installs a fresh copy.
 
Ok, thanks! As I just got it and have nothing on it, so nothing to archive and save. So I'm going to do an erase and reinstall and try to create more space like getting rid of printer drivers and extra languages, etc. Though it's still weird there seems to be a lot of space being taken up there and only 232 GB total? When the actual total should be 250GB. Don't understand that.
 
That size difference is due to a couple of things. First of all, the total size of the disk can be calculated 2 different ways, i have forgotten the specifics if it. By one method you end up at close to 250 and the other you aparently get 232. The other is Apple takes the larger number and rounds it up to a nice large even number. On iPods and probably computer pages you will see fine print about "actual formatted capacity less." A question for Google if you want specifics!
 
Pickoff said:
That size difference is due to a couple of things. First of all, the total size of the disk can be calculated 2 different ways, i have forgotten the specifics if it. By one method you end up at close to 250 and the other you aparently get 232. The other is Apple takes the larger number and rounds it up to a nice large even number. On iPods and probably computer pages you will see fine print about "actual formatted capacity less." A question for Google if you want specifics!
Click to expand...

Ok thanks Pickoff (and munson and yippy). I'll have to Google or Wiki it as you said to find out the specifics.
 
Pickoff said:
By one method you end up at close to 250 and the other you aparently get 232. The other is Apple takes the larger number and rounds it up to a nice large even number.!
Click to expand...

Yep, that is due to different ways of calculating a gigabyte. Whether you're using 10^9 or 1024^3 (you'll find that marketing types calculate using the former and most operating system the latter). This obviously creates lots of confusion and complaints from consumers.
 
Ah, one other question. What is the difference be between Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and (Case-sensitive Journaled)?
 
Pukey said:
Ah, one other question. What is the difference be between Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and (Case-sensitive Journaled)?
Click to expand...

The former is the normal one and the latter is case-sensitive. Meaning a file named file is not the same as one named FILE.

Not very good.
 
Thanks alphaod for the explanation of journaled and case-sensitive. That's good to know.
sr5878, yeah, I guess I could get Monolingual, I guess I'd just like to do this reinstallation for the experience too.
 
No. That is his total space. The "smaller" 186 is simply the result of a different gigabyte calculation method. And some classic marketing rounding up.
 
The difference, from what I have learned on other threads, for the hard drive capacity is based on the mathematics used to calculate the free space. OS X uses binary mathematic, and in this methodology 1 GB = 1073741824 bytes (or 1024^3, or I like saying 2^30 because it makes more sense to me), whereas the hardware companies are using conventional mathematics where 1 GB = 1000000000 (or 10^9). All this really means is that there will be a 7% (or really 7.374..) difference between what the capacity shown by the OS and the capacity of the drive. I believe they are trying to make it so that the binary gigabyte is referred to as GiB, and the base 10 gigabyte is referred to as GB.

Thus, the person with the 200GB hard drive should have their OS show about 184GB; if you have a 250GB hard drive it should show 232GB; and my paltry 120GB drive shows 111GB....
 
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