Space on the Hard Drive question.

[crocodilious]

hey, when my mac mini came, about 25GB of space had been used up. i didn't question this as of course the machine came with installed applications and data etc. i've had my mac mini for a while now and obviously i've used up much of the hard drive, but i checked how much i had used up and i made it 58GB. The total space is 74GB and i've got 3GB left. So where has the other 12 GB been used up? Is it something to do with the OS?

Help appreciated. Apologies if this is a basic question.

Croc.

 

[MacDawg]

Not sure if this is your issue or not...

From Apple Support Articles

" Modern operating systems such as Mac OS X use binary mathematics to define the total capacity of a hard drive. Using binary math, an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard drive reports approximately 74.51 GB of available space.

In binary math, 1 GB is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes, whereas conventional (or base 10) mathematics instead calculate 1 GB as exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes.

This numerical discrepancy (73,741,824 bytes per gigabyte) represents a difference between the physical “base 10” specification used by hard drive manufacturers and Mac OS X’s binary measurement of available capacity. The 80 GB and 74.51 GB values represent two methods of mathematical measurement that describe a hard drive with approximately 80 billion bytes.

This is normal behavior, and there is no hard disk space missing. Regardless of which method is used to measure total capacity, the storage capacity in bytes of the hard drive is the same. Previous operating systems (including Mac OS 9 and earlier versions) also demonstrate this mathematical difference.

Other factors, such as the system software, applications, updates, and your files and data use part of the available disk capacity, meaning a new Macintosh computer will not show the total capacity listed as available for use. The amount of hard disk drive space required for normal operation of a Macintosh computer will vary widely, depending on configuration, model, and personal requirements.

Note: Hard disk manufacturers may also round off decimal places when stating storage specifications, such as approximately "39.5 GB" instead of "39.49 GB".

Or you can check out the Guide here at MR: Hard Drive Size Discrepancy

Hard Drive Size Discrepancy

Why does my new 500 GB hard drive report it only has 465 GB? Have I been ripped off?

No, you haven't been ripped off. 500 GB = 465 GB, strange as it seems.

The reason is that computers count a "kilo" something as 1024 (binary 2^10) while the rest of the world count a "kilo" as 1000 (decimal 10^3). A 'mega' in computer binary system is 1024 x 1024 = 1,048,576 (rather than decimal 1,000,000), and a 'giga' is 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824 rather than decimal 1,000,000,000

This creates a discrepancy of approximately 7% between the number of GB the computer reports, and what is advertised as the drive's capacity in GB. It is important to note that there is no difference in the number of actual bytes of storage - it is only a difference in reporting when the binary 'giga' terminology is used.

A 500 GB hard drive has about 500,000,000,000 bytes (it is never exact, commonly a drive is designed to have more bytes, to allow for a certain number of defective sectors to be mapped out). When counted on the computer, 500 Gb (decimal) = 500 billion bytes = 465.66 GB (binary).

Some propose using a different term, gibibyte (GiB) for the binary figure, however that is unlikely to catch on in the marketplace.

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[Consultant]

http://guides.macrumors.com/Hard_Drive_Size_Discrepancy

Please see the existing posts or search next time.

 

[crocodilious]

hmmm, i'm not sure that's it.
i understand that 80GB is actually 74GB or whatever, but i'm saying that if i total up everything i have stored and the space that's left, it comes to 61GB, leaving 13GB (74gb-61gb) that has disappeared ON TOP of the 7% or so lost with the binary business.
does this make sense?

 

[dubhe]

I take it you don't have any partitions?
Run disc utility and it should tell you where every byte of your drive is.

 

[littleb2005]

also alot of gigs is taken up by the extra languaes and the ilife applictions

 

[crocodilious]

thanks guys, no i don't have an partitions and yeah i ran disc utility and it sorta helped, haha.
i missed a bit out whilst calculating it, but when i did it again i realised they were more or less right which their estimates (though i couldn't seem to get the exact numbers). so i'm relatively pleased now but i'm almost outta space on the Hard drive...but i've got 1TB of backup ^^

 

[macsg]

space on the hard drive question

as macos x works with the harddrive, be sure to have enough empty space on your systemdrive. you need at least 30gb for the system + applications to work smoothly.