I did a full lion recovery on my new rmbp. is it normal that just osx with its standard apps takes about 24gb on the ssd? info shows 499gb available, 475gb free...is this because everything is at higher res? thanks!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Retina MBP Lion Install Size
- Thread starter ApplePu
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Try this:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716
Then post the InstallESD.dmg size.
Probably just local Time Machine backups.
no, no backups involved. I've done it the same way as on any other mac I own. before recovery the 512gb ssd shows 499gb free and after successful installation it shows only 475gb...
any idea why it is like that? i could understand if it is about the ui, but 24gb? that's pretty huge!
I don't think you can do an internal time machine backup? Would sort of defeat the purpose too, if your hard drive fails, your backup would fail along with it
OP, 24GB sounds about right. It's not huge at all, it's the right size for most modern operating systems. You can go to About This Mac > More Info > Storage for a breakdown of the files inside your computer- if you haven't installed anything, the Other (yellow) box will be your OS's size.
I'm not sure at all. I'm wondering how Lion is viewing formatting on the drive. Because 475GB is about right for formatting a 512GB drive, but 499GB is too little. The terminology appears to be inaccurate or something.
Starting with Lion Apple changed the way they read hard drive capacities, so a 500GB drive will appear as a 500GB drive (my 512GB drive shows up as a '500GB Flash' drive in About My Mac).
Of course, user files will appear larger now, but it should confuse users a bit less.
wrong! in my 2011 mbp i had a 512gb samsung ssd, and running lion it showed 511.xx available.
the fact that the install takes 24gb still confuses me, if I remember right lion took about 8gb on my other machines...
by the way: the yellow indicator indentifies 21.9 gb as"other". so is there the difference between 512 and 500 included or is it "effective" 22gb?
Last edited:
I don't think you can do an internal time machine backup? Would sort of defeat the purpose too, if your hard drive fails, your backup would fail along with it
Strange as it sounds, starting with Lion, if you have a portable Mac with Time Machine turned and you are away from the backup destination, the machine will create local backups in /Mobilebackups. Lion manages this space and will delete the backups if the system/user needs the space.
This is why Disk Util and Finder show different numbers for free space in Lion. One includes the /Mobilebackups folder and the other does not.
I think the idea is if you accidentally delete a document you could still use the local Time Machine backup to retrieve it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878I don't think you can do an internal time machine backup? Would sort of defeat the purpose too, if your hard drive fails, your backup would fail along with it
I repeat my question:
How large is the InstallESD.dmg on rMBPs?
I'm not 'wrong'- it is a fact that Apple changed the way the OS reads the drive capacities. As it turns out, it was even earlier, in SL, not Lion though.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2419
(previously, it was reported using the binary - base 2 - measurement)
Does your computer show there being a 512GB drive or 500GB? That's the total capacity. If it says 22GB is used, then you'll have 478GB available.
All I can tell you is, after I installed ML, I had 499.9GB total capacity and around 47x GB free, so there's nothing wrong with your computer.
That's very strange indeed! Thanks for clarifying that for me.
You can remove it, but it will be created again on the next reboot. You'll need to also disable Safe Sleep, but that can be risky for users with unsaved files open and a low battery.
I did this on my 17" MBP with a small SSD. I gained back 16GB of precious disk space, but I had to always be mindful of the battery meter.
I have experienced this as well and feel somewhat relieved that nothing is wrong with my machine. I just got a rMBP with 512gb ssd. I had an issue with migration so I had to erase the ssd. In disk utility it lists "Macintosh HD" as only 499.xgb. I erased it and had 498.x available of 499.x. I then installed ML after restarting and holding command + r. After that, 'about this Mac' said I had 475.x available of 499.x.
So, this seems to be standard. Does everything seems correct with my system? I just want to make sure i didn't lose and HD space since I had the migration issue.
Thanks!
So, this seems to be standard. Does everything seems correct with my system? I just want to make sure i didn't lose and HD space since I had the migration issue.
Thanks!