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.
Why is my 128gb saying 114gb capacity?
- Thread starter Appl3FTW
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I don't know the exact details but it's also how the phone/computers in general calculates storage. Something like one MB is actually equal to 1024KB. And so on and so forth.
It has sometching to do with base numbers.
I can't believe how many people on tech forum don't know how storage works these days.
128GB models come pre-loaded with iLife and iWork apps, so that's probably eating up a fair amount of space.
Go ahead and calculate how many 128gb is supposed to be and come back to me bruh. I'm fully aware of how storage capacity works.
----------
That might be it
You can delete those apps if you want more storage anyway. I got rid of iTunes U and GarageBand as I have no use for them.
All manufacturers sell Disk based solutions as 1000bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1000kilobytes = 1mb, etc.
And they arent technically wrong. 'kilo' in the metric system does in fact mean 1000. Its just that in computers, using binary addressing, a computer thinks it should be 1024 bytes, as that's how you see it in a addressing sense.
This has been going on for years. Buy a Hard Drive at 120GB and format it, with no data at all on it - its not going to be 120GB as far as the PC is concerned.
And they arent technically wrong. 'kilo' in the metric system does in fact mean 1000. Its just that in computers, using binary addressing, a computer thinks it should be 1024 bytes, as that's how you see it in a addressing sense.
This has been going on for years. Buy a Hard Drive at 120GB and format it, with no data at all on it - its not going to be 120GB as far as the PC is concerned.
Hard drive manufacturers market drives in terms of decimal (base 10) capacity. In decimal notation, one megabyte (MB) is equal to 1,000,000 bytes, one gigabyte (GB) is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes, and one terabyte (TB) is equal to 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.
Programs such as FDISK, system BIOS, Windows, and MacOS use the binary (base 2) numbering system. In the binary numbering system, one megabyte is equal to 1,048,576 bytes, one gigabyte is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes, and one terabyte is equal to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.
Source: http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/172191en
Programs such as FDISK, system BIOS, Windows, and MacOS use the binary (base 2) numbering system. In the binary numbering system, one megabyte is equal to 1,048,576 bytes, one gigabyte is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes, and one terabyte is equal to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.
Source: http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/172191en
There is approx 119 usable GBs on any virgin 128GB drive. That's industry standard. Then subtract OS and all the pre-installed apps.
If you format a 128gb with nothing in it, it should be 128gb. The only reason why it's less is if it was loaded with os.
Not just 128GB models, 64GB too. Probably 16GB as well although that would be a huge percentage of it's storage.
As I prefaced my post I wasn't sure of the details but I knew it had something to do with bases of numbers.
Thankfully another poster came by and was willing to do some research and posted links to the source, clarifying the subject for us.
----------
Yes, but unfortunely what things should be and how they actually are in the real world are often not the same.
I can't believe how much this gets asked given that it's not unique to iPhones. Hard drives, SSDs, and all storage devices are all marketed in gigabytes (GB) where 1 GB byte = 1,000,000,000 bytes. The virtual capacity reported by the OS is actually expressed in gibabytes (GiB) where 1Gib = 1,073,741,824 bytes.
That's the difference plus some for that used by formatting, OS, etc.
That's the difference plus some for that used by formatting, OS, etc.
No, that is absolutely not correct at all, and testable on any drive in existence. Thats now how Manufacturers rate drivers.
See the attached. This is my main 120GB SSD in my desktop. You will see it was 119,000,000 bytes, which is where the manufacturer gets the size 120GB, but the OS only sees it as 110GB, due to binary addressing.
Attachments
I said 119GB is on a virgin drive and "before" OS and pre-loaded apps. 114 on the iPhone is with the OS installed and all the pre-loaded Apple apps. You have the correct amount to free storage.
