Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

320G drive reports 297.77Gs? What the Frubar

I

iyacyas

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 4, 2008
91
0
I recently purchased the last version 2.8 24" iMac which I love. It came with a 320G drive. I have been with computers for years and know that hardware and software report byte size differently. Especially between Windows and Mac. But it took me about 2 weeks into having this machine to look at how much space I have left on the drive only to discover that it is only reporting a 297.77G drive installed. Now that is ridiculous, if it was a 300G drive then the reporting of 297G would be ok with me. This is this is (32.? GBs) missing. Is this normal for a drive of this size? Has any one else had this problem?

Please could someone else with a 2.8 iMac with the 320G drive check theirs and tell me the result before I call Apple.
 
Manufacturer says: "a gigabyte is 1 billion bytes"
OS says: "a gigabyte is 1024^3"

If you do the maths, you'll discover why. If you don't google always works.
 
iyacyas said:
I recently purchased the last version 2.8 24" iMac which I love. It came with a 320G drive. I have been with computers for years and know that hardware and software report byte size differently. Especially between Windows and Mac. But it took me about 2 weeks into having this machine to look at how much space I have left on the drive only to discover that it is only reporting a 297.77G drive installed. Now that is ridiculous, if it was a 300G drive then the reporting of 297G would be ok with me. This is this is (32.? GBs) missing. Is this normal for a drive of this size? Has any one else had this problem?

Please could someone else with a 2.8 iMac with the 320G drive check theirs and tell me the result before I call Apple.
Click to expand...

Do you have a problem with simple subtraction? 320 - 297.77 = 22.33 not "(32.? GBs)" lol
 
Yes, this is completely normal - my 320GB drive reports a size of 298.1 GB with 297.77 GB usable when formatted - exactly like yours.

The reason this happens is because of a difference in counting - not between hardware and software, but rather between manufacturer and user (by user, I mean the hardware/software in the computer the drive's installed in). The manufacturers count 1 GB as 1000 MB, when in reality it's 1 GB = 1024 MB. Same deal for MB, KB, TB, and everything else. You can get an estimate of the actual capacity of the drive with this calculation (assuming drive size in GB):
User Size = Manufacturer Size * 1000^3 / 1024^3
For terabyte drives:
User Size = Manufacturer Size * 1000^4 / 1024^4
A similar formula works for other capacities.
 
That's pretty normal. My 750GB drives report 690-something GB capacity. I can do the math for you if you want as to why that happens.

EDIT: wrldwzrd89 beat me to it ;)
 
journal?

most modern file-systems have a journal to do some file-system reconstructing voodoo in case of computer crash...

ext3, reiserfs, i think xfs too; apple's zfs is no exception (or whatever leopard uses)
 
Cave Man said:
What is "frubar"?
Click to expand...

mastershakess said:
Do you have a problem with simple subtraction? 320 - 297.77 = 22.33 not "(32.? GBs)" lol
Click to expand...

Hey man give me a break I'm a simple Okie... Mat is berry hawd fur me soumtims.

Frubar is code for the well known Fubar just encase my kids see it they would never figure it out. Now if I was to actually type Fubar they would get that right away. Sorry if you do not see the logic, I sure find the humor in it.

I guess I'll just use this 300G drive until I fill it up in about two months then use external drives. Form what I understand the RAM is about the only thing on these iMacs that you can replace without breaking the Apple warranty, or is that just for the new iMac. Anyone know the answer to that? Can I replace the drive my self without breaking the warranty? Then I can get a 1TB drive which would give me a nice 936G drive. Lets see that is the difference of 54G, Damn it I'm probly wrong again.
 
sorry, no, you can't replace the HDD yourself (whithout breaking the warranty).
and by the way: 1TB are supposed to be 1024 GB, while you actually get 931,3 GB, so you miss over 92 GB. It sucks but we have to live with that...
 
Consultant said:
Newbie don't look at the thread before posting? What the Fudge?

For example
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/669373/
Click to expand...
Thanks you Consultant, but unfortunately that was in the Macbook thread in which I did not look. I am terribly sorry and maybe after a few years I'll learn to do more research before I bother you guys with a stupid question. But thank you for making me feel welcome.
 
Arne said:
sorry, no, you can't replace the HDD yourself (whithout breaking the warranty).
and by the way: 1TB are supposed to be 1024 GB, while you actually get 931,3 GB, so you miss over 92 GB. It sucks but we have to live with that...
Click to expand...

User won't break warranty if user did not break anything.

There is NOTHING MISSING. Marketers think GB = byte * 1000^3
but computers think GB = byte * 1024^3

So HarddriveMarketSpec * 1000^3 / 1024^3 is your harddrive size as seen by your operation system.

iyacyas said:
Thanks you Consultant, but unfortunately that was in the Macbook thread in which I did not look. I am terribly sorry and maybe after a few years I'll learn to do more research before I bother you guys with a stupid question. But thank you for making me feel welcome.
Click to expand...

Sorry I forgot the smily earlier. Didn't want to sound mean.
 
Nor did I

Consultant said:
User won't break warranty if user did not break anything.

There is NOTHING MISSING. Marketers think GB = byte * 1000^3
but computers think GB = byte * 1024^3

So HarddriveMarketSpec * 1000^3 / 1024^3 is your harddrive size as seen by your operation system.



Sorry I forgot the smily earlier. Didn't want to sound mean.
Click to expand...

I did not intend to sound mean either, but I don't know how to put on a smiley that is on my face, LOL. Alls good fun. I love my iMac! even if it only has 297G of storage.
 
Aw, remember when...

i remember back in the late mid 90's. When I bought my first 1G drive, of course it was used as the average person could not afford this size drive. I was about 26 years old and both my Father and Grandfather said "What the Hell did you do that for... You might as well went out and thrown your money into the wind... You'll never fill up that drive... What a waste..." Now my father is complaining because his 60Gb drive on his iBook is full, and mostly of just software. He has to store his data (pictures-movies-etc) on an external drive. Although he has firewire so it's not that big of a deal, LOL. My how times have changed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back