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How much actual space on 256/512GB rMBP?
- Thread starter rockyroad55
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It should still say, under "Storage" in "About this Mac".
We can assume it would be the same as the 512, so this would suggest it would be approximately 243.42 GB on the 256 GB model.
I'm aware it should still say, I'm at work, so I can't check.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's not that much taken, but I could be mistaken.
Apple should advertise it as a 500GB SSD, not a 512GB SSD.
Yes, I know, actual capacity is usually less than advertised in this industry and there's the GB/GiB difference (where hard drives and SSDs are always advertised in GB) but that alone cannot account for this particular 12GB of difference. There's a reason that Sandforce drives with RAISE aren't advertised as 512GB drives but 480GB drives…
The Samsung drive takes 12GB extra for overprovisioning, and even OS X itself says it's a "500 GB flash storage." So Apple should not call it a 512GB SSD on their website when selling it. Normal 512GB SSDs take the 7% difference between GiB and GB for overprovisioning, but the Samsung drives take quite a bit extra… This makes the actual capacity of the Samsung drive that has supposedly 12GB extra the same as most 500GB mechanical hard drives
Apple's "512GB SSD" vs a "real" 512GB SSD:
A real 512GB SSD is 512.11 gigabytes and the internal SM512E is 500.28 gigabytes… This is unformatted true capacity. (By the way, OS X correctly calls the Vertex 4 a "External 512 GB Solid State SATA" versus "500 GB flash storage" for the SM512E showing that even Apple knows the difference between a 500GB drive and a 512GB drive)
Again, the "reality distortion field" at play, this time with storage!
Yes, I know, actual capacity is usually less than advertised in this industry and there's the GB/GiB difference (where hard drives and SSDs are always advertised in GB) but that alone cannot account for this particular 12GB of difference. There's a reason that Sandforce drives with RAISE aren't advertised as 512GB drives but 480GB drives…
The Samsung drive takes 12GB extra for overprovisioning, and even OS X itself says it's a "500 GB flash storage." So Apple should not call it a 512GB SSD on their website when selling it. Normal 512GB SSDs take the 7% difference between GiB and GB for overprovisioning, but the Samsung drives take quite a bit extra… This makes the actual capacity of the Samsung drive that has supposedly 12GB extra the same as most 500GB mechanical hard drives
Apple's "512GB SSD" vs a "real" 512GB SSD:
A real 512GB SSD is 512.11 gigabytes and the internal SM512E is 500.28 gigabytes… This is unformatted true capacity. (By the way, OS X correctly calls the Vertex 4 a "External 512 GB Solid State SATA" versus "500 GB flash storage" for the SM512E showing that even Apple knows the difference between a 500GB drive and a 512GB drive)
Again, the "reality distortion field" at play, this time with storage!
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Apple should advertise it as a 500GB SSD, not a 512GB SSD.
Yes, I know, actual capacity is usually less than advertised in this industry and there's the GB/GiB difference (where hard drives and SSDs are always advertised in GB) but that alone cannot account for this particular 12GB of difference. There's a reason that Sandforce drives with RAISE aren't advertised as 512GB drives but 480GB drives…
The Samsung drive takes 12GB extra for overprovisioning, and even OS X itself says it's a "500 GB flash storage." So Apple should not call it a 512GB SSD on their website when selling it. Normal 512GB SSDs take the 7% difference between GiB and GB for overprovisioning, but the Samsung drives take quite a bit extra… This makes the actual capacity of the Samsung drive that has supposedly 12GB extra the same as most 500GB mechanical hard drives
Apple's "512GB SSD" vs a "real" 512GB SSD:
Image
A real 512GB SSD is 512.11 gigabytes and the internal SM512E is 500.28 gigabytes… This is unformatted true capacity. (By the way, OS X correctly calls the Vertex 4 a "External 512 GB Solid State SATA" versus "500 GB flash storage" for the SM512E showing that even Apple knows the difference between a 500GB drive and a 512GB drive)
Again, the "reality distortion field" at play, this time with storage!
The worst part is that OSX uses Base 10 to calculate storage while other OS's use Base-2. So the GB/GiB thing doesn't even apply in this case. Apple's just shafting us of 12 billion bytes. I'm surprised they're allowed to advertise it as 512GB.
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That's because nobody has sued them for it yet… Even if they do have a disclaimer saying "actual formatted capacity may be less" (and I don't see any such disclaimer anyway) it's still VERY misleading to sell a 512GB drive with the same usable capacity as their own 500GB hard drives…
If you look at the "Select your MacBook Pro" page under the retina tab, there is a section about storage, and there's a footnote. The footnote text reads: "1GB=1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." That disclaimer is always on the information pages for their computers.
Except you're not getting 512 billion bytes with these "512GB" SSDs. You're getting almost exactly 500 billion. And you only lose a couple hundred megs to partitioning (because of the EFI partition)
Fact of the matter is, you get the exact same storage capacity whether you're buying a "512"GB SSD or a 500GB HDD from Apple.
If you buy a 512GB SSD aftermarket, you get 512 billion addressable bytes. These SSDs usually have an extra 8-16GB dedicated to provisioning. By Apples standards, they'd be advertised as 528GB SSDs.
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The poster I was responding to said he didn't see the disclaimer anywhere. I was just pointing out that it's there, that's all.
I see that now. But "actual formatted capacity less" implies that the formatting itself is responsible for the decreased space (in reality it's less than 1 GB for both the recovery partition and the EFI combined), while it's really the drive's internal overprovisioning that's taking the extra 12 GB. Apple's got no excuse here - it's a 500 GB drive, not a 512 GB drive.
That said, Samsung has a Windows tool for changing the overprovisioning level on the Samsung 830 - does it work with this drive?
It's more than 8-16 GB for a 512 GB drive - since flash memory is always manufactured by base-2, the total raw NAND capacity on these drives is ~549.76 GB (512 GB + (512 GiB - 512 GB)) GB. Apple advertising the SM512E as 512 GB would be like an SSD vendor advertising their 512 GB drives as 550 GB (or even 512 GiB), which would get any other company in trouble except Apple. The 6-18 GB you lose due to Apple's false advertising is a lot when Apple is charging nearly $2 per GB for upgrades…
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There's a disclaimer on the tech specs pages... footnote #1
1GB=1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
We're discussing unformatted capacity. The formatted capacity is even less (slightly) than the figures being discussed here.
Haha. Another thread about the same issue. We had a lot of fun in the other one: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1424219/