How many bytes per GB?

[John Musbach]

Mac OS X says 46.82GB = 49,995,766,983 bytes but Google says: 49 995 766 983 bytes = 46.5621864 gigabytes. Does the way Mac OS X counts GB's per byte differ from that of Google or is my filesystem fubar'd (Disk Utility reported no issues)?

 

[Aea]

The difference is that one GB = GiB and the other GB = GB, confused yet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

See Consumer Confusion Section

 

[John Musbach]

Ohhh, so Mac OS X is reporting in GiB and Google is literally reporting in GB?

EDIT: Doesn't look like that's it: 49 995 766 983 bytes = 46.5621864 gibibyte

 

[Aea]

Mac OS X says 46.82GB = 49,995,766,983 bytes but Google says: 49 995 766 983 bytes = 46.5621864 gigabytes. Does the way Mac OS X counts GB's per byte differ from that of Google or is my filesystem fubar'd (Disk Utility reported no issues)?

49995766983/pow(1000,3) = 49.995766983 GB
49995766983/pow(1024,3) = 46.562186426483095 GiB

Sorry, read the question in haste due to me being tired. The difference is likely based on file block allocations, size on disk will (almost always) be larger then the size of the data stored. I'm guessing you did a calculate size on an entire directory, so the extra disk use compounds with every file, etc

TLDR: Your OS is fine, it's normal

 

[Chundles]

There should be 5,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte. Anything less or more is not 5 gigabytes.

46.82GB SHOULD be 4,682,000,000.000 bytes but stupid people who originally named 1024 bytes a "kilo" byte wrecked it for everyone.

 

[John Musbach]

49995766983/pow(1000,3) = 49.995766983 GB
49995766983/pow(1024,3) = 46.562186426483095 GiB

Sorry, read the question in haste due to me being tired. The difference is likely based on file block allocations, size on disk will (almost always) be larger then the size of the data stored. I'm guessing you did a calculate size on an entire directory, so the extra disk use compounds with every file, etc

TLDR: Your OS is fine, it's normal

Oh ok I see, thanks. I confirmed the same behavior on two different computers, one running Leopard and another Tiger so indeed this seems normal behavior. (and yep you guessed it, this resulted from getting the total size of a folder)

 

[kntgsp]

Mac OS X says 46.82GB = 49,995,766,983 bytes but Google says: 49 995 766 983 bytes = 46.5621864 gigabytes. Does the way Mac OS X counts GB's per byte differ from that of Google or is my filesystem fubar'd (Disk Utility reported no issues)?

Well Google is doing it correctly with the information given.

49,995,766,983 / 1024^3 (Binary value for Giga) gives 46.5621864.

Math doesn't lie.

and 46.82GB(GigaBytes) in Bytes is 50,272,592,200, using 1024^3. Even if you use decimal instead of binary (1000^3), you get 46,820,000,000 not 49,995,766,983.

So I dunno what to tell you. It could be that OSX is calculating the bytes available. It could be every so many bytes are reserved for some write, causing it to report less that there are.. I dunno. You'd have to ask someone more familiar with the inner workings of OSX.

 

[kntgsp]

49995766983/pow(1000,3) = 49.995766983 GB
49995766983/pow(1024,3) = 46.562186426483095 GiB

Sorry, read the question in haste due to me being tired. The difference is likely based on file block allocations, size on disk will (almost always) be larger then the size of the data stored. I'm guessing you did a calculate size on an entire directory, so the extra disk use compounds with every file, etc

TLDR: Your OS is fine, it's normal

Aaaaand someone beat me to it.

 

[millar876]

Short answer - 1GB = 1,073,741,824
Long answer; see below

8 bits (b) = 1 Byte (B)
1024 B = 1 kilobyte (KB)
1000 B = 1 KiB

The easiest way to think about it is 1024 is the binary number your computer uses to count hard drive capacity and 1000 is the decimal value hard drive manufacturers use to sell their hard drives because it makes the numbers look bigger. There is the exact same ammount of information, but, a 16 Gigabyte iPhone sounds a lot better from a marketing standpoint than a 14.9 gigabyte one (iPhone figure lower because the "about" screen dose not show space used by the iPhone OS, if somone with an iPhone wants to they can post the full capacity from iTunes)

 

[SC68Cal]

Base 10 numbering collides with Base 2 once again.

 

[John Musbach]

Thanks for the replies everyone. My main concern was why the byte count was differing from the GB reported by Finder when checking the total size of a directory and Aea answered it nicely. Apparently (and the GUI doesn't make this too obvious) the GB reported is the size on disk while the bytes reported are size of data stored. I expected the byte and GB reported to correlate together like they do when checking the used space on a volume but for one reason or another it appears that that is not so when getting the total space used for a directory.

 

[Am3822]

Now that the question has been answered, here's another view of the matter -- http://xkcd.com/394/

(a bit out of place, I know, and yet)