Harddrive Capacity
Hi, I have a 80GB harddrive in my G4 Powerbook. The capacity it recognizes is 74.53GB. Where is the +5GB? This is the OEM Fujitsu harddrive that the PB came with when new. I did buy it with panther and currently running 10.4.10. Can anyone explain?
I have the same issue with my 20GB 3rd gen iPod. Capacity shows 18.59.
Thanks!
I have the same issue with my 20GB 3rd gen iPod. Capacity shows 18.59.
Thanks!
Comments
Hi, I have a 80GB harddrive in my G4 Powerbook. The capacity it recognizes is 74.53GB. Where is the +5GB? This is the OEM Fujitsu harddrive that the PB came with when new. I did buy it with panther and currently running 10.4.10. Can anyone explain?
I have the same issue with my 20GB 3rd gen iPod. Capacity shows 18.59.
They hide a few GB away in the back of the machines in order to store personal data that gets passed on to the NSA.
It's mainly just the size differences between the way GB is expressed. If you consider that 1GB means 1,000,000,000 bytes then you get 80GB of space. The computer being binary sees 1GB as 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes. Therefore you really only have 80,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = 74.5GB. Some smaller amount gets lost on formatting (HFS+, MS-DOS etc.) too.
Lots of people come across this problem at some point in time using a computer and we've discussed it a few times on this forum. The best idea really would be for the drive manufacturers to tell people the actual size of the drive, expressed in what is known as gibibytes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte
gigabytes as they are expressed on drive labelling are largely meaningless. I guess it keeps the numbers rounded off but I'd say that proper size info would be of more value to consumers. For example, if someone has 60GB of music then they might think a 60GB ipod would be a good idea but then find it only takes about 55GB of songs. Whereas if they had just said it's a 55GiB ipod then they might go for the 75GiB version.