imac disk utility problem

[bearvsshark]

I have just erased my imac startup disk using the lion osx dvd and disk utility. I chose to do a zero pass format and after about 3 hours, it is done. When I click on the partition that was created though, it says there is 851.7mb of used space on the partition. I am confused since I formatted it, shouldn't there be no used space? Or is that 850mb being used for something that I can't prevent?

Here's a screenshot of my drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Image

 

[theturn]

yes system files and file system catalogs do take up more space on a larger drive that's why it becomes more noticeable, before OS X changed it's way of calculating bytes that number would seem even larger.

 

[bearvsshark]

yes system files and file system catalogs do take up more space on a larger drive that's why it becomes more noticeable, before OS X changed it's way of calculating bytes that number would seem even larger.

Thanks for the help. One more thing, if I click on my partition in disk utility, the erase free space... button becomes available. What does it do and should I do that before installing lion? Thanks again.

 

[Puevlo]

All erase free space does is create a gigantic file the same size as your free space and then deletes it. If you've zeroed out that's more than enough.

 

[bearvsshark]

Its not going to do any harm that I did it too though right?

 

[robgendreau]

It doesn't do any harm assuming you wanted to permanently erase everything on it