[Storyboy]

Hey,

I understand that there are formatting files that take up space, but should these files, whatever they are, take up nearly 9 gigs?

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 with an 8M Buffer in a Coolmax FW enclosure. And there was some point in partitioning the drive where Disk Utility reported over 14 gigs available. What's that all about?

It is not the loss of space that concerns me. I have done fine with the 13G in my iMac, I just got the itch for more...and, in shopping, I was taken in by the Cinema Soda Scam..you know, "Would you like to try a large. It's only 20 cents more!" So I went with the 120.

I just need to know what is living in that unusable space.

Thanks.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by Storyboy:
Hey,

I understand that there are formatting files that take up space, but should these files, whatever they are, take up nearly 9 gigs?

Yes.

[bonk]

Originally posted by Immortal K-Mart Employee:
Yes.

No. The way a gb is calculated is different. Basically they way it's said is 1gb = 1million bytes, in which reality it's 1.xxx bytes (can't think of the exact number).

[tae667]

HD manufacturers says kilobyte is 1000, when in reality it's 1024 bytes. This applies to every single HD everywhere, even iPod - companies cheat.

[Drakino]

As others have said, it's the difference between how marketing reports the drive, and how it really works. Similar to the old difference in monitor marketing.

In fact Apple is named in the lawsuit about this deceptive marketing.

Some drive manufacturers are getting better about this. For example, the IBM 120gb drive a friend of mine bought actually had 118GB of real space, and not the expected 111.

[talisker]

It all depends how you define 1 GB. A drive marketed as being 120GB is, as you might expect, 120x1000x1000x1000=120,000,000,000 bytes, which corresponds with the "real world" IS units view of things. However, in computer-nerd-land, 1 GB is 1024x1024x1024 bytes, so your 120,000,000,000 byte drive is considered to be 120,000,000,000/(1024x1024x1024)=120,000,000,000/1,073,741,824=111.76GB.

[Storyboy]

Originally posted by talisker:
However, in computer-nerd-land, 1 GB is 1024x1024x1024 bytes, so your 120,000,000,000 byte drive is considered to be 120,000,000,000/(1024x1024x1024)=120,000,000,000/1,073,741,824=111.76GB.

Thanks for the input!

My early introductory Computer Science education is coming back to me now. I've also read up on that lawsuit, but since Seagate is not named, and I am not likely to run out of space anyway, I'll let them slide

Now, how about the 114.somehing GB reported during partitioning?

Thanks, again...