Why do I only have 25GB free on my new 64gb MBA?

[dannyar]

Most of you who saw my thread about deciding to keep or not keep my MBA will prob ask, so let me get it out of the way. Still waiting to try and exchange for 4gb MBA.

Anyways, my current 64 gb only has 25gb of free space. All I have installed is, Facetime Beta, Steam, Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat Source, Left 4 Dead and Office 2011. TF2 and LFD2 are only 6 gigs each, day of defeat 602MB and Office 2011 1 GB. Thats roughly 14GB. I know the 64 is formatted to 60 and after iLife 2011 pre installed and the OS should leave me at 50gb. But 50-14 isnt 25 GB. Where is my other 11GB or so?

 

[spinnerlys]

Take a look at DiskInventory X, OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.

 

[dannyar]

Just checked with disc inventory, shows my drive formatted is only 58 down from the 64. Seems excessive?

 

[ayeying]

Just checked with disc inventory, shows my drive formatted is only 58 down from the 64. Seems excessive?

Base 2 vs Base 10.

You're fine.

 

[dannyar]

Base 2 vs Base 10.

You're fine.

What does that mean? Sorry

 

[Bluemeanie1976]

1000mb per gig, as opposed to 1024 mb

 

[spinnerlys]

What does that mean? Sorry

Snow Leopard uses the base 10 to report file sizes, meaning 64,000,000,000 Bytes are 64GB in Snow Leopard, while in Leopard and all the other OSs out there the base 2 is used to report file sizes.
64,000,000,000 Bytes are 59.6GB using 2^30 as divisor.

1000mb per gig, as opposed to 1024 mb

MegaByte is abbreviated with MB, not mb, as it might be confused with Megabits.


from new imac, avi size more than it is .. ?

No. Example: 350 MB = 358,400 KB (350*1024) = 367,001,600 B (350*1024*1024). As SL does not use 1024 as multiplication factor, and uses 1000 instead, 367,001,600 gets divided by 1000 to get to 367,001 KB and again by 1000 to get to 367 MB.

And again, the file size is still the same in bytes, just how the OS reports it to you is different. While the file is 367,001,600 Bytes in Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6, it will be reported as 350MB in 10.5, but 10.6 reports it as being 367MB in size.

To find out how big the files in question are in Bytes, select one of them, press Command + I and see for yourself.

This confusion has been around for as long as there has been binary computer (which is a LONG time!). Memory is most conveniently designed and built in sizes that are powers of 2. For convenience 2^10 bytes, which is 1,024 bytes, is called a kilobyte even though it is slightly larger. Likewise a megabyte is 2^20 bytes, and is more than a million bytes (1,048,576).

However building disk drives doesn't rely on powers of 2 and disk drive sizes have always been stated in decimal terms, mainly a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes.

The difference has been confusing as people would buy computers with a disk drive that reported a size less than they purchased since file sizes were also in binary kB or MB. So with Snow Leopard, Apple started reporting everything in decimal, which would eliminate the confusion and perhaps make people feel better that 1GB of RAM now reports as 1.074 GB.

 

[dannyar]

still dont understand why i have only 56 formated when others are reporting 60

 

[darksolusion]

still dont understand why i have only 56 formated when others are reporting 60

reformat ur machine do a fresh install with only english language package that will free up 1-2 gigs

 

[Pressure]

Also download Monolingual and remove all other languages you don't need.

Easily save 1-2 GB depending on applications and they support files.

 

[arctic]

still dont understand why i have only 56 formated when others are reporting 60

It is what it is, dude.

 

[barefeats]

I have 46GB of stuff on my 11" MacBook Air. That includes OS X, iLife, Photoshop, and Starcraft.

So for a 64GB flash drive to only have 25GB free is not unusual. Thankfully, I have the 128GB flash drive.

 

[spinnerlys]

still dont understand why i have only 56 formated when others are reporting 60

Either right click on the Macintosh HD icon in the Sidebar or on the Desktop or in a Finder window to open the GET INFO window or use Disk Utility to see the size of the Macintosh HD volume - capacity, used and available.

Taking screenshots in Mac OS X.
How to Use Preview for Basic Image Editing: Crop, Rotate and Resize
​

 

[WardC]

This sounds about right. With all the games you have installed, you probably don't have much free space left on 64GB. I have X-Plane 9 installed on my Mac Pro with all the maps, and it uses 77.31GB for the Program Folder alone!!