Missing hd space after a format

[hankkosovo]

I've just formated my 320gb hard drive on my macbook pro, and I only have 280gb of free hd space.

OSX and iLife doesn't take up 40gb does it?

Thanks in advance guys.

 

[mkrishnan]

Sigh...

First, google "formatted capacity." A 320GB drive has a formatted capacity of about 298GB, I believe. If you installed a good chunk of iLife (iDVD and GB in particular are huge) and OS X, then yes, it's about right.

 

[hankkosovo]

Thanks mkrishnan. I did google and search this forum to no avail, but didn't think to google 'formatted capacity'.

Thanks again.

 

[mkrishnan]

Okay, good. So the installation is about 18GB, which is a lot. If you really need some of that back, you can look at removing Garageband or iDVD, which again are quite large, because they store lots of media content (loops for GB and various themes and stuff for iDVD). As for OS X itself, Snow Leopard is supposed to be smaller, as you may have heard.