Probably a silly one but I am curious anyway. I ordered my Mac Book Pro with the 120gig HD. I booted it up the first time, the capacity said 111gig and 95gig was available. Why isn't the capacity 120?
That would mean it would show somewhere around 117. There is also filesystem data. Plus they usually high-ball it, if it is 113 they would call it 120.
You probably have some invisible file crud taking up space, especially if you ever connected any external drives. Get OmniDiskSweeper and have a look at your drive.
That would mean it would show somewhere around 117. There is also filesystem data. Plus they usually high-ball it, if it is 113 they would call it 120.
I've heard some on this board mentioning of a bloated version of OS X (all languages etc) being installed out of the factory. Reinstalling from the Disc that comes with your Mac should take up a lot less space, apparently.
I have been told that each time your Macbook or Macbook Pro is turned on or any other computer for that matter that you are automatically using my HDD space and RAM regardless of whether you have physically opened apps/documents. Just for running the computer you use up some sort of space, thus the reason as to why it is not in it's full capacity.
All operating systems will use a swap or page file. Basically... if your memory usage is maxed out... the OS dumps data it is still using to the hard drive (as sort of auxiliary... but orders of magnitude slower RAM). The size of this page/swap file can be fairly small... all the way up to the max size of your installed memory. This is why more memory is always better in modern OSes. Having your system swap/page data make a major performance hit. Think about it this way... the RAM on your machine is sort of like your memory (in your head). If someone asks you something you know, you can answer immediately... it's in your memory. The stuff that gets swapped/paged (or drive access in general) is more like a book or encyclopedia. If someone asks you something you don't know... and you have to look it up... it takes you much longer.
Anyway... I digress... the biggest reason, as others have mentioned, for the discrepancy is simply the method used to measure a GB. In reality, a GB is 1,024MB... but for the sake of making it easier (and making drives look larger) they market 1,000 MB as a GB... but your system still says a GB is actually 1,024 MB.
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That would mean it would show somewhere around 117. There is also filesystem data. Plus they usually high-ball it, if it is 113 they would call it 120.
Originally posted by jpennington
That is true, but not for nine gigabytes.
That would mean it would show somewhere around 117. There is also filesystem data. Plus they usually high-ball it, if it is 113 they would call it 120.
Not exactly.
You see, the way they calculate space on the box:
1 GB = 1000 MB = 1,000,000 KB = 1,000,000,0000 Bytes
So in order to convert the "ad" capacity to true capacity:
true (GB) = (1000/1024)^3 * ad(GB) or
total (GB) = (~0.931) * ad (GB)
This would give you around 111+ GB on a 120 GB drive.
The interesting thing is that "eneteprise" class drives are advertized much closer to true capacity.
Add to FAQ.
Anyway... I digress... the biggest reason, as others have mentioned, for the discrepancy is simply the method used to measure a GB. In reality, a GB is 1,024MB... but for the sake of making it easier (and making drives look larger) they market 1,000 MB as a GB... but your system still says a GB is actually 1,024 MB.