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urrl78 · Jul 15, 2004, 05:22 PM

I know an 80 gig HD uses some of it's memory for the OS software etc, but shouldn't it still say it has a fillable capacity of 80 Gig? Mine says in system profile:

Macintosh HD:

Capacity: 74.41 GB
Available: 24.6 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s3
Mount Point: /

Is 74.41 GB what you other 80 Giggers are reading?

MrForgetable · Jul 15, 2004, 05:27 PM

My 20.0 GB shows 18.1GB.

MrCaN · Jul 15, 2004, 05:28 PM

Welcome to the world of Math. We normies do maths in junks of 1, HD manufacturers do math in junks of 8, I think am sure someone will flame me if I'm wrong. Anyhow, they way the manufactures do math, they get 80GB, the way normies do math we get 74.4 GB, kinda like the monitor is 19" (17.5 viewable).

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for the imature, this is my 69 th post -hehe
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johnmccaig · Jul 15, 2004, 06:22 PM

its how the bits/bytes is calculated.

100% marketing ploy

1024mb 1gb.

vs 1000mb in 1gb

Cliff_O · Jul 15, 2004, 06:35 PM

80,000,000,000 (80 billion bytes) divided by 2^30 (1,073,741,824 aka: gigabyte) is 74.505.

SafariX · Jul 15, 2004, 06:36 PM

40=37.13!

hldan · Jul 15, 2004, 07:14 PM

Yeah, it's a mathematical equation. If someone remembers how to do it please post?
A certain equation of numbers is done and at the end it will show the total amount of your HDD. So an HDD with a capacity of 80GB will show as 74.4GB in Disk Utility. Unfortunately it's the lower amount that's really what's available on your drive.
It's nothing illegal about it. Even ram is calculated this way. 1GB of ram is really 1024MB.

Holigen · Jul 15, 2004, 08:17 PM

It has to do with the conversion to binary format... Bits to bytes. One byte is eight bits. The other equations support this and show you Im just making it easier to understand.

And thats all I have to say about that.

madmacgames · Jul 15, 2004, 10:33 PM

we should all switch to a base 8 math system, in ever aspect of of our lives. Ah I can just imagine how much better the world would be if only we all did base 8 math.

jld · Jul 15, 2004, 10:48 PM

Originally posted by madmacgames:
we should all switch to a base 8 math system, in ever aspect of of our lives. Ah I can just imagine how much better the world would be if only we all did base 8 math.

Wow, I just went from 22 years old to 26. Wasn't that quick! Apparently I make a lot more money too!

olePigeon · Jul 15, 2004, 11:02 PM

Originally posted by johnmccaig:
its how the bits/bytes is calculated.

100% marketing ploy

1024mb 1gb.

vs 1000mb in 1gb

Your answer is here.

rag on a muffin · Jul 15, 2004, 11:44 PM

Originally posted by madmacgames:
we should all switch to a base 8 math system, in ever aspect of of our lives. Ah I can just imagine how much better the world would be if only we all did base 8 math.

this might be nice if we didnt count our thumbs as fingers, and hexadecimal might be useful if we had 16 fingers.

(",)PB12 · Jul 16, 2004, 12:46 AM

I think its more of system files taking up the space then a mathematical anomaly. The OS itself will take up a fraction of harddisk space. But do not forget that every single file on your hardisk do not exactly represent just that one single file. Every file has a header file that occupies harddisk space too. Even every directoy willl have a header file specifiying what are the files and directories in that particular directory. I'm pretty sure this is the reason why a newly purchased computer will never have the same HD capacity as reported on product specifications.

RonnieoftheRose · Jul 16, 2004, 01:18 AM

I've never asked this question. On a FAT formatted disk a 1K file takes up 32K because the smallest sector is 32K in size. On a FAT32 or NTFS disk this comes down to 4K. What is the size of a sector in KBytes on a Mac OS Extended disk?

arekkusu · Jul 16, 2004, 02:08 AM

HFS Extended block size is 4k by default. It doesn't have to be 4k, though.

madmacgames · Jul 16, 2004, 03:16 AM

I'd also like to nominate this thread for the "Most Misleading Subject Line of the Year" award.

urrl78 · Jul 16, 2004, 08:57 AM

In a way I feel better because its not a defect of my HD and yet I feel hosed by the manufacturer. 5 gigabytes is quite a lot of memory never to be able to use. I remember when hard drives ONLY CARRIED 5 Gig.

It reminds me of my gross salary after taxes....

Thanks for the replies.

rglenn · Jul 16, 2004, 09:06 AM

Originally posted by (",)PB12:
I think its more of system files taking up the space then a mathematical anomaly. The OS itself will take up a fraction of harddisk space. But do not forget that every single file on your hardisk do not exactly represent just that one single file. Every file has a header file that occupies harddisk space too. Even every directoy willl have a header file specifiying what are the files and directories in that particular directory. I'm pretty sure this is the reason why a newly purchased computer will never have the same HD capacity as reported on product specifications.

No, it's a mathematical anomaly.

As of late, there's been a movement - initially lead by hard drive companies, but now by idiots wanting to preserve the "sanctity" of the Metric prefixes - to define kilobytes as 1000 bytes, megabytes as 1000 kilobytes, gigabytes as 1000 megabytes, etc., whereas the traditional definition is a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, etc. This is due to the fact that as a binary machine, it's more efficient / appropriate to express limits and units as powers of 2.

So we have, under marketingspeak, 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, and under the traditional (correct) way, 1 GB = 1,024 * 1,024 * 1,024 = 1,073,741,824 bytes. 80 "GB" thus converts to (80*1,000,000,000/1,073,741,824)= approx. 74.505 real GB. Take off a little for the file system, and you're left with a very familiar looking 74.4-ish

(Interestingly, some base-10 gigabyte people suggest continuing to use a base-2 gigabyte for things like RAM and Flash, so we'll have 2 definitions of gigabyte used at once. Brilliant.)

djohnson · Jul 16, 2004, 09:53 AM

Originally posted by urrl78:
I remember when hard drives ONLY CARRIED 5 Gig.

Our first computer had 100MB and that was a LOT!

urrl78 · Jul 16, 2004, 11:39 AM

Yeah I can imagine the add at the time, a "WHOPPING 100 MB" of memory. Wow.

I guess I shouldn't complain at all then, and expect about 92 out of the 100 Gig HDs comming up.

Tenacious Dyl · Jul 16, 2004, 12:06 PM

a 40 gb internal = 36-ish
a 200 gb external = 186-ish

still have room tho

d.fine · Jul 16, 2004, 05:14 PM

Originally posted by madmacgames:
I'd also like to nominate this thread for the "Most Misleading Subject Line of the Year" award.

15"

urrl78 · Jul 16, 2004, 06:30 PM

My DAD came unexpectedly into my room and caught me playing with it again . He told me to get a girlfriend; I spend to much time with it He says. I think he understands though. Even though his is only 12" I catch him playing with his too sometimes. My sister also likes to watch. Soon she will have her very own 15 inches.

I play with my 17" all the time. It sometimes gets kinda hot, especially when it's overworked. Its burning right now...GASP! I am ejecting, ejecting a DVD!... Wow...So Soon!!! This thing spits burned DVD's out like crazy!

Should I worry about using protection? Nah...I could never catch anything...viruses are for those Windows people.

We are both so proud of our Powerbooks.

RonnieoftheRose · Jul 16, 2004, 06:49 PM

Originally posted by urrl78:

Should I worry about using protection? Nah...I could never catch anything...viruses are for those Windows people.

Good, sleep. These jokes are getting too too old.

Gig103 · Jul 19, 2004, 03:39 PM

12 inches.
Oh, you meant powerbook? 15 inches.