HDD Space! Conundrum!

Joe563 · Jul 5, 2008

Hey guys

I got my macbook yesterday and all well! Just a question about the HDD space.

I bought my macbook with 160 GB but under "about this mac" it says the Fujitsu drive capacity is 149.05 GB (Wheres my at least 9-10 GB)

Macintosh HD

Capacity 148.73 GB
Available 128.74 GB

Ive installed office 2008 for mac, put about 6 ablums on it, were did my 30 GB go? lol

I know that when you buy a hard drive, its usually about 5 or so GB less then its stated. Surely the Fujistu drive should say 160 GB - 155 GB. Does Leopard really take 20 GB to install? And lastly should I re-install OSX Leopard upon which the HDD space should be more correct? Is this normal and Im worrying about nothing?

Sorry for it being long but I wanna partition the drives etc and transfer all my info from my windows laptop this weekend so I can sell it to offset the purchase of my glorious macbook! ;D

Joe

JohnTheMacGeek · Jul 5, 2008

You're worrying about nothing. You'll never get the full amount of advertised drivespace out of any HD regardless of which model or O/S is on it. Search the threads and you'll see explanations regarding this issue. If I can find it, I'll post it for you, as well.

Joe563 · Jul 5, 2008

Hey John thanks a lot man, I can get to transfering all my stuff now! Cheers

BeaufordBuddy · Jul 5, 2008

People still don't know about this issue? I thought this would be common knowledge by now.

onilawliet · Jul 5, 2008

People know, but it's still obnoxious when you pay x amount of money for a machine that advertises a 250GB hard drive and then you realize you have about 240GB instead.

I don't see why companies just be HONEST and say that the machine will have 240GB.

Dysfunction · Jul 5, 2008

Because the drive is 250gb. It will vary by filesystem type.

xstep · Jul 5, 2008

See my Reported Hard Drive Capacity guide for an explanation. It even has a calculator at the bottom of the page.

Dysfunction · Jul 5, 2008

Yes, there's a difference between capacity definitions, however it is easy to check on your Apple without using math to perform the calculations. Simply open terminal and issue df -h (which will show as base 2) and df -H (which will show in base 10). For instance:

Code:

mikeMbp:~$ df -H
Filesystem                                                             Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                                                           250G    88G   161G    36%    /
devfs                                                                  111k   111k     0B   100%    /dev
fdesc                                                                  1.0k   1.0k     0B   100%    /dev
map -hosts                                                               0B     0B     0B   100%    /net
map auto_home                                                            0B     0B     0B   100%    /home


mikeMbp:~$ df -h
Filesystem                                                             Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                                                          233Gi   82Gi  150Gi    36%    /
devfs                                                                 109Ki  109Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
fdesc                                                                 1.0Ki  1.0Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
map -hosts                                                              0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net
map auto_home                                                           0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home

Keep in mind that the actual usable space will vary by not only OS, but also the filesystem used on the drive as well.