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SSD shows 55Gig capacity?

Deanster

Deanster

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 6, 2005
291
208
Hi all -

just had a few minutes with an SSD MBA, and I noticed in the system profiler that it showed the SSD as having 55 gigs available.

Now, I've been using computers for a long time, and I expect formatted capacity to be substantially below nominal capacity, but that seems a bit out of control...

I'd expect an 80GB Drive to format down to 75GB or so... and a 60GB drive down to 56GB. But a nominal 64GB down to 55? Given how small the drive is in the first place, that seems crazy.

Did I just read it wrong? Am I missing something? Am I just clueless?

help me out here!
 
Available = space not used up by files.
Available ≠ capacity.

With Mac OS X, all language translations, printer drivers, iLife '08, iWork '08 Demo, and I believe the Office 2008 demo, that sounds reasonable.
 
I understand the MBA has an Apple Hardware Test partition on the drive from the factory. This will certainly use up some space.
 
For whatever it's worth... they display model (SDD) at Washington Square in Tigard, OR had just over 30GB unused memory. No pro applications were loaded! Just iLife. The 1.8, 80GB (BTO) is starting to sound better.
 
Deanster said:
Hi all -

just had a few minutes with an SSD MBA, and I noticed in the system profiler that it showed the SSD as having 55 gigs available.

Now, I've been using computers for a long time, and I expect formatted capacity to be substantially below nominal capacity, but that seems a bit out of control...

I'd expect an 80GB Drive to format down to 75GB or so... and a 60GB drive down to 56GB. But a nominal 64GB down to 55? Given how small the drive is in the first place, that seems crazy.

Did I just read it wrong? Am I missing something? Am I just clueless?

help me out here!
Click to expand...

Exact same deal here. It seemed a little excessive to me too, but that's what it is. I've loaded a bunch of apps, including MS Office, and I have 37.48GB left available out of a total capacity of 55Gb on a 64Gb SSD.
 
When I tested them out I found the SSD to be a little too slow for my needs. I liked the SSD but I couldn't bring myself to spend $3k on that computer..
 
I wondered the same thing. In fact I went into disk utility to make sure there wasn't another partition and sure enough there was only one taking up the entire disk and it was 55GB total, with about 35GB free.
 
I bet there are a bunch of system files stored in that 5 gigs or so....deep kernel type stuff that you can't touch
 
lord patton said:
(64*1000)/1024=62.5

yeah, what gives?
Click to expand...

That's not the calculation.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9829266-7.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

Open Disk Utility, click on your hard drive (not the partition which might be smaller) and look in the lower right.

My 200GB Hitachi looks like this:
Total Capacity : 186.3 GB (200,049,647,616 Bytes)

Applying the same math to a 64GB drive gives us about 59GB.

So we might be missing about 5GB here, not 8. I wonder if this is a FLASH vs. HD measurement (see the Wikipedia link)
 
bplein said:
That's not the calculation.

My 200GB Hitachi looks like this:
Total Capacity : 186.3 GB (200,049,647,616 Bytes)

Applying the same math to a 64GB drive gives us about 59GB.

So we might be missing about 5GB here, not 8. I wonder if this is a FLASH vs. HD measurement.
Click to expand...

My Sony TZ198 has a 64GB SSD of which 61.2GB is available according to Diskeeper.
 
lord patton said:
(64*1000)/1024=62.5

yeah, what gives?
Click to expand...

Your math is a bit off. It should be 64*(1000/1024)^3. Regardless, that works out to 59.6 GB, so your original point still stands... what happened to the missing 4.6 GB?

EDIT: I've got to remember to refresh old tabs before I post.

ubercool said:
My Sony TZ198 has a 64GB SSD of which 61.2GB is available according to Diskeeper.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? This doesn't seem mathematically possible.
 
panoz7 said:
Your math is a bit off. It should be 64*(1000/1024)^3. Regardless, that works out to 59.6 GB, so your original point still stands... what happened to the missing 4.6 GB?
Click to expand...

The easy rule of thumb is that when you're talking GB, it's (approximately) .93. A full install of OS X takes ~9 GB, and a minimal install still takes about 5 GB. So having 55 available actually sounds like slightly more than I would expect.
 
QCassidy352 said:
The easy rule of thumb is that when you're talking GB, it's (approximately) .93. A full install of OS X takes ~9 GB, and a minimal install still takes about 5 GB. So having 55 available actually sounds like slightly more than I would expect.
Click to expand...

I thought the system profiler is suppose to show only the actual drive space available as if nothing was installed on it. Disk Utility is suppose to show both actual and available.
 
panoz7 said:
Your math is a bit off. It should be 64*(1000/1024)^3. Regardless, that works out to 59.6 GB, so your original point still stands... what happened to the missing 4.6 GB?

Are you sure about that? This doesn't seem mathematically possible.
Click to expand...

Yes, you're right. I looked in the regular My Computer directory and it shows 59.7GB available, and that's what you said above. :eek:
 
Apple Developer note for the MBA states that the SSD is 64GB formatted to 60GB which will translate to 55G, hope that's clear.
 
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