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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > iPhone, iPad & iPod > when does 32 = 27.96?

when does 32 = 27.96?
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canadave
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Aug 8, 2012, 01:54 PM
 
Answer: when it's your 32GB iPad, apparently.

I just noticed in iTunes that on the Summary page, my "32GB" iPad 3 has a capacity listed as 27.96GB. Now, I'm fully aware of the issue of rounding and hard drives and manufacturer wiggle room when it comes to drive capacities, but that seems like quite a stretch, isn't it? I mean that's 4GB short out of 32, or a full eighth. Or am I missing something here?
     
cgc
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Aug 8, 2012, 02:16 PM
 
I assume you've already synced the iPod and you're curious afte-the-fact why ~4GB is unusable for music and other stuff? Can you post a screenshot of the content of your iPod according to iTunes? Odds are, your ~4GB is "Other" which would include the music database and artwork. Of course you never have 32GB available on a 32GB device. A brief search on the Internets shows a LOT of other people asking about this same issue with people with 80GB iPods complaining about only having 72GB available. It's normal.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Aug 8, 2012, 02:21 PM
 
Are you sure its not 29.76GB?

1GB is often said to be 1000x1000x1000 Kb
In truth its 1024x1024x1024 Kb

This means you multiply the quoted figure by 0.93.

32GB x 0.93 = 29.76GB

Or maybe there is 1.8GB of OS and other non-media files.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
canadave  (op)
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Aug 8, 2012, 02:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by cgc View Post
I assume you've already synced the iPod and you're curious afte-the-fact why ~4GB is unusable for music and other stuff? Can you post a screenshot of the content of your iPod according to iTunes? Odds are, your ~4GB is "Other" which would include the music database and artwork. Of course you never have 32GB available on a 32GB device. A brief search on the Internets shows a LOT of other people asking about this same issue with people with 80GB iPods complaining about only having 72GB available. It's normal.
Yes, it's synced, but the 4GB is not "Other". It says "Capacity: 27.96GB". I interpret that to mean that that's the full size of the SSD on the iPad, regardless of what else is on it.

As I said in my post, I'm fully aware of the "rounding" that hard drive manufacturers have done forever, and the controversy over that, and I know 32GB will never precisely equal 32GB. However, I was expecting something more like 31.56GB, rather than 27.96GB.

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4884/width/350/height/700[/IMG]
     
BLAZE_MkIV
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Aug 8, 2012, 04:50 PM
 
There's all so the space taken up by the filesystem / partition itself. These are generally not included in the available space. The /System folder on my Mac is 4.5GB iOS should be smaller than that but not by a whole lot.
     
canadave  (op)
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Aug 8, 2012, 06:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV View Post
There's all so the space taken up by the filesystem / partition itself. These are generally not included in the available space. The /System folder on my Mac is 4.5GB iOS should be smaller than that but not by a whole lot.
ahhh, okay, that makes sense, thanks. So really the issue is one of semantics. I wonder why they don't simply say "Capacity: 32GB" for the iPad, and just put "System Files: 4GB" somewhere?

Oh well...good to get to the bottom of it, anyway.
     
HealthBuffMe
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Aug 12, 2012, 09:25 AM
 
Yeah, same here I got surprised when I got my iPhone at first. It's 16GB and I remembered having a capacity lesser than that. (I forgot the exact figure) You're right, the missing GBs could be for the said system files and other non-app related stuffs.
     
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Aug 13, 2012, 12:58 AM
 
The issue with drivemakers lying through their teeth does not apply here, as the iPad uses flash memory. Flash is based on power-of-two storage, just like RAM, so when they say 32 GB they really mean 32 GB as in 32*1024*1024*1024 bytes. The difference between that and what you see can be system files or spare area for efficient transfers - flash can only be erased in large blocks, which means that you always need some spare area be able to juggle data that you didn't want to erase.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
   
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