I ordered a new iMac 2.0 ghz processor and 1 gb of ram, dvd burner and a 160 gb hard drive. The only problem is that under about this mac it says my hard drives mac capacity is 149.05 gb so i order 160 how come it is not 160 gb???
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
My new iMac has wrong Hard Drive
- Thread starter littlelarry33
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Read the fine print. "1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Actual formatted capacity less".
In the real world, 1 kilobyte = 1,024 bytes. In the marketing world, 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes.
In the real world, 1 kilobyte = 1,024 bytes. In the marketing world, 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes.
Nah, you never had that 10GB to start with.
Go to Disk Utility (Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility), and click on your HDD. Disk Utility says my 80GB external drive has a Total Capacity of 74.5GB (80,026,361,856 Bytes).
It's tricky and deceiving, but the companies manage to get away with it.
Yeah...
Something like that.
This issue has been discussed to death for years. This the first computer or hard drive you've ever purchased?
Something like that.
This issue has been discussed to death for years. This the first computer or hard drive you've ever purchased?
We humans tend to base capacities off of 10, but a computer bases it off of 2, hence the 256, 512, 1024, etc. If you want to find the actual capacity of the drive, divide the number of bytes (160,000,000,000 for you) by 1024 3 times... then you will know the actual capacity. Besides, who wants to read long decimals and odd numbers, don't we want a regular number?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
When quoting the size of the drive they do it in Gigabytes, but when the OS reports the size it actually reports Gibibytes, which makes it look smaller.
B
When quoting the size of the drive they do it in Gigabytes, but when the OS reports the size it actually reports Gibibytes, which makes it look smaller.
B
I'd just like to add that every hard drive (or other storage device) manufacturer does this. You can't buy a 160 GB hard drive and have it show up as 160 GB.
Think of it as advertised gas mileage with cars. What's on the sticker assumes ideal conditions. It's not quite the same thing with storage capacity, but they get away with it for the same reasons - you can compare different models relatively (200 GB is twice the storage of 100 GB by any measure) and it really doesn't matter that much to the average consumer.
A 15" MacBook Pro doesn't have a 15" screen either - it's 15.4". Apple reports it as being smaller for the sake of simplicity.
Think of it as advertised gas mileage with cars. What's on the sticker assumes ideal conditions. It's not quite the same thing with storage capacity, but they get away with it for the same reasons - you can compare different models relatively (200 GB is twice the storage of 100 GB by any measure) and it really doesn't matter that much to the average consumer.
A 15" MacBook Pro doesn't have a 15" screen either - it's 15.4". Apple reports it as being smaller for the sake of simplicity.
Also, strangely enough, you'll notice that memory also works, (as all things computer related), in binary. 32MB>64MB>128>256>512>1GB>2GB etc. However they are quoted exactly as they should be.
On the other hand, flash memory doubles each time also, but is the same as magnetic HDDs. I recently bought a 16GB USB flash drive. It's 15.6GiB though.
On the other hand, flash memory doubles each time also, but is the same as magnetic HDDs. I recently bought a 16GB USB flash drive. It's 15.6GiB though.