Where'd my 8.53GB go?!

im...LOST

I've a 3 year old Macbook with a 120GB HD that had Snow Leopard on it. I've formatted the harddrive and reinstalled Tiger because I'm gonna sell it.

I've noticed that the capacity of the HD has now dropped to 111.47GB. That's a loss of 8.53GB. Now, it could be that I've jsut noticed it now and it has always been that but that 111.47GB doesn't look familar to me and I've been using the laptop for 3 years.

I just find it wierd that my new Macbook has a 250GB HD and it reads as having a 249.**GB capacity while my old one has such a big difference from the original figure.

What would cause this to happen and is there anything I can do to recover the lost Gigs?

Thanks for your help.

J-blk

The answer to this has to do with some "creative" marketing by hard disk manufacturers. You see, most hard drives are sold with the idea that 1GB = 1000MB. However, this is not how operating systems view 1GB - they view it as 1GB = 1048MB. So any x size HDD is seen as "smaller" in the OS. Windows sees hard drives this way and so does every version of Mac OS X until Snow Leopard. In Snow Leopard, Apple changed the calculation inline with the HDD marketing spiel, 1GB = 1000MB and so you see the hard drive as it is sold effectivelly:

In OS X 10.5 Leopard, the amount of disk space was calculated using base 2 (binary) measurement — 1MB = 1,048,576 bytes. That’s why you can only “see” 465GB from a 500GB hard disk.

In Snow Leopard, disk space calculation is measured using base 10 (decimal) system — 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes. So, you will actually “see” 500GB from a 500GB hard disk. So there’s the mystery of the “additional recovered space” revealed. There is a discrepancy though: software and physical memory (RAM) are still calculated using base 2.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrading-to-snow-leopard-the-things-you-need-to-know-mac/

Ham'nd'egger

J-blk wrote: »

The answer to this has to do with some "creative" marketing by hard disk manufacturers. You see, most hard drives are sold with the idea that 1GB = 1000MB. However, this is not how operating systems view 1GB - they view it as 1GB = 1048MB. So any x size HDD is seen as "smaller" in the OS. Windows sees hard drives this way and so does every version of Mac OS X until Snow Leopard. In Snow Leopard, Apple changed the calculation inline with the HDD marketing spiel, 1GB = 1000MB and so you see the hard drive as it is sold effectivelly:



http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrading-to-snow-leopard-the-things-you-need-to-know-mac/

OP also reinstalled Tiger; this has a bigger footprint on a HD than Snow Leopard which should explain a few GB as well.

J-blk

Hamndegger wrote: »

OP also reinstalled Tiger; this has a bigger footprint on a HD than Snow Leopard which should explain a few GB as well.

True, but I believe he is talking about overall capacity, not free space. The discrepancy between 10.6 and 10.4 would be then down to the calculation when looking at the total available space but you're right, Tiger will also use more space anyway.

Penrose

Snow Leopards filesystem is newer then Tiger, the OS also requires more space. Some HDD manufacturers list a drive capacity including unreachable areas as well, areas that are not available to the OS.

By default the OS takes a chunk, the filesystem takes its chunk and then the rest is determined based on cluster sizing, its a split between space and efficiency, efficinecy of the clusters is almost always preferable

im...LOST

Thanks lads. Much appreciated.