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The Capacity and Used of my ExFAT partition is shown differently from Windows
- Thread starter levmc
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The definition of 'gigabyte' is a bit of a mess. Windows defines a gigabyte as 1024 x 1024 x 1024 byes (1,073,741,824), whereas MacOS defines it as 1,000,000,000 bytes. Both sides have reasonable arguments for their definitions.
The definition of "gigabyte" has actually resulted in several lawsuits in the past. I remember getting an e-mail that I was part of a class-action settlement against a disk drive maker many years ago.
www.zdnet.com
But it is still really confusing. Looking at the listing of a large file in Windows Explorer, it shows the size as 3,134,654 KB but when you look at the file properties it says 2.98 GB (3,209,885,048 bytes). I am running Windows under Parallels, and in the Finder it shows a size of 3.21 GB while "Get Info" shows 3.21 GB (3,209,885,048 bytes).
Take your pick. At least the actual size of 3,209,885,048 bytes is consistent.
Seagate pays out over gigabyte definition
Customers can claim a five percent refund on the purchase price of their hard drives following a lawsuit over Seagate calculating 1KB at 1,000 bytes not 1,024
www.zdnet.com
But it is still really confusing. Looking at the listing of a large file in Windows Explorer, it shows the size as 3,134,654 KB but when you look at the file properties it says 2.98 GB (3,209,885,048 bytes). I am running Windows under Parallels, and in the Finder it shows a size of 3.21 GB while "Get Info" shows 3.21 GB (3,209,885,048 bytes).
Take your pick. At least the actual size of 3,209,885,048 bytes is consistent.
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Try it with less than 15GB of data.
I suggest putting 10GB of your data on the Google Drive, then do the Get Info (or Windows equivalent) on the Google Drive. Write down all the numbers exactly. Compare those numbers with the same 10GB folder on both Mac and Windows. Whichever one is closer is likely the same as how Google counts space.
I say "closer" because the numbers may not match exactly. There's a thing called "metadata" that can affect how data is counted. I don't know what metadata Goole Drive keeps, so if it drops any or adds its own, then that will change the numbers slightly.
I suggest putting 10GB of your data on the Google Drive, then do the Get Info (or Windows equivalent) on the Google Drive. Write down all the numbers exactly. Compare those numbers with the same 10GB folder on both Mac and Windows. Whichever one is closer is likely the same as how Google counts space.
I say "closer" because the numbers may not match exactly. There's a thing called "metadata" that can affect how data is counted. I don't know what metadata Goole Drive keeps, so if it drops any or adds its own, then that will change the numbers slightly.
According to this Quora answer Google Drive uses Gibibytes (the bigger ones). I can't confirm that, but Google Cloud does use Gibibytes and does call them "Binary Gigabytes (GB)" which matches what the answerer is saying.