rMBP: What's your SSD's actual capacity?

[blow45]

The average consumer has associated the 500gb drive with hard drives, unconsciously at least, 512 is a novel number to them, it makes sense that storages be labelled thus so one knows form first glance that they are not getting less or equal to the drive they had in their MacBook 5 years ago, but hey are getting a different and collosally more expensive 512gb "digital drive". It makes perfect sense this is a marketing touch nas of course on real technological increments that are there for a reason. On eBay or in stores it's not going to be the 500gb MacBook it's the 512gb MacBook pro with retina, ie with a different class of storage.

The real storage after error correction and recovery partition (which I think we can conclude are the culprits here) is 500gb, but as the other user correctly pointed out marketing is more important here cause you are shelling out another what $600. Then eh have to put 500gb on the about this mac. Cause well that's what it's got left after all what with the hidden partition and the error correction. Is it confusing the user that the 16gb iPad, only has say 14.5gbs available to use? It might be, but marketing takes precedence.

It makes perfect sense to me, and, as usual, the guy who said it best said it simplest and it was the other poster above.

 

[gentlefury]

is there a hidden restore partition (OSX Lion feature)??

yes there is

 

[Hellhammer]

You guys are making it more complicated than it is. The drives are sold to Apple as 512GB, that reads in the actual product sticker:

(That's from a MacBook Air but it doesn't matter)

What Apple decides to do with that space is their own matter. It's common knowledge that the actual usable capacity is always less. A 500GB hard drive is not 500GB either after formatting and EFI partitions etc.

 

[spdntrxi]

I can't remember which company it was ....but I think someone got sued for stating a drive was a certain size...when it was really close. Kinda like calling a motorcycle 1000cc when its really 997cc... Some ppl just wanna sue.

 

[TheMacBookPro]

You guys are making it more complicated than it is. The drives are sold to Apple as 512GB, that reads in the actual product sticker:

(That's from a MacBook Air but it doesn't matter)

What Apple decides to do with that space is their own matter. It's common knowledge that the actual usable capacity is always less. A 500GB hard drive is not 500GB either after formatting and EFI partitions etc.

I understand that, but why would it say 500GB here? Shouldn't it say 512GB (since that's the actual drive capacity)?

My 250GB HDD in my old Pro doesn't say 228GB there, it says 250GB.

 

[doh123]

I understand that, but why would it say 500GB here? Shouldn't it say 512GB (since that's the actual drive capacity)?

Image

My 250GB HDD in my old Pro doesn't say 228GB there, it says 250GB.

like the Link i put up earlier in this thread, Apple partially explains all this.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3127

its less because space on the drive is being used for other things. Most of the things its being used for is at an internal level that is used before the computer can use it and the drive doesn't let the computer touch that... so the computer will not see the space as available.

 

[TheMacBookPro]

like the Link i put up earlier in this thread, Apple partially explains all this.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3127

its less because space on the drive is being used for other things. Most of the things its being used for is at an internal level that is used before the computer can use it and the drive doesn't let the computer touch that... so the computer will not see the space as available.

I can understand the 500.28GB in Disk Utility and 499.42GB in About This Mac. The only thing I don't understand is why Apple chose to put 500GB Flash there, rather than 512GB, because it shows the advertised capacity on my other Macs (not the capacity that's available to the user). e.g.:

 

[swordfish5736]

I can't remember which company it was ....but I think someone got sued for stating a drive was a certain size...when it was really close. Kinda like calling a motorcycle 1000cc when its really 997cc... Some ppl just wanna sue.

That's why there site says actual formatted capacity less

I know BMW does this with some cars. The outgoing model has a 4.0 liter engine but it's technically 3,999cc so they label it as such in technical documentation

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I can understand the 500.28GB in Disk Utility and 499.42GB in About This Mac. The only thing I don't understand is why Apple chose to put 500GB Flash there, rather than 512GB, because it shows the advertised capacity on my other Macs (not the capacity that's available to the user). e.g.:

Image

It is actually 512gb but that 12gb you don't see is for replacing bad blocks throughout the life of the drive

 

[TheMacBookPro]

I know BMW does this with some cars. The outgoing model has a 4.0 liter engine but it's technically 3,999cc so they label it as such in technical documentation

That's for taxation reasons I think, many European countries charge more road tax yearly depending on the capacity of your engine.

It is actually 512gb but that 12gb you don't see is for replacing bad blocks throughout the life of the drive

That makes more sense. Apple should still put 512GB under About This Mac though, I can see it confusing some users making them think there's something wrong with their computer.

 

[Mr MM]

you should read this

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5710/the-adata-xpg-sx900-128gb-review-maximizing-sandforce-capacity

although it explains for a different controller, it illustrates somewhat how a SSD uses that capacity that aint there

 

[TickleMeElmo]

A GB is 1000*1000*1000 bytes which is how storage is sold. A GiB formally is 2^30 bytes which is 1024^3 which is how Windows and OSX see data.

Therefore a 128 GB drive is only ever seen as 122.x GB by the OS. You still have 128GB but the OS uses the binary representation.

 

[Hellhammer]

A GB is 1000*1000*1000 bytes which is how storage is sold. A GiB formally is 2^30 bytes which is 1024^3 which is how Windows and OSX see data.

Therefore a 128 GB drive is only ever seen as 122.x GB by the OS. You still have 128GB but the OS uses the binary representation.

OS X 10.6 and later version understand GB as 10^9, not as 2^30 like earlier versions and Windows do.

 

[swordfish5736]

That's for taxation reasons I think, many European countries charge more road tax yearly depending on the capacity of your engine.

I think it varies by car. Germans are crazy like that. Another engine they used to sell is a 3.2 liter but is actually 3,246cc

That makes more sense. Apple should still put 512GB under About This Mac though, I can see it confusing some users making them think there's something wrong with their computer.

Yea. Well it'd be smart if they would show that 12gb in the profiler but say that it's reserved for "system" or something. Though I'd guess the OS doesn't even see that 12gb I thinks the controller in the SSD hides it