Macbook Noob.

Brian8bit · 31 Oct 2010 at 19:48

There's two different ways of measuring HDD space. Binary and decimal. Software usually uses binary, manufacturers use decimal. It's something like 1024 for binary and 1000 for decimal (I'm not entirely sure, I've only looked into this once a long time ago because I was wondering why my 500GB HDD was reading much less with an install of Windows (and there's no way a full OS install takes up that much space)). Hence you'll get a 500GB drive from a manufacturer but when you install the drive and the operating system it will read that you've only got 400 and something GBs.

This occurs on pretty much every OS I've ever come across. Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD. There is however an attempt to move to a different method of measuring HDD size in software so that it reflects what the manufacturers advertise, and I recollect that Ubuntu would be switching to "base-10" units for measurement.

theheyes · 31 Oct 2010 at 19:52

Snow Leopard uses the decimal system (another fun fact)

Feek · 31 Oct 2010 at 19:54

Apple changed to 'base-10' in Snow Leopard so that it reports a 1Tb drive to be 1000Mb.

/edit - too slow!

Brian8bit · 31 Oct 2010 at 20:00

I didn't realise they'd moved over already. More OS's should so that it's less confusing to end users. Also, I'm crap at maths, so decimal is much easier for me to calculate.

Cavallino · 31 Oct 2010 at 20:01

Vinni3 @H|H said:
I'd hazard a guess and say that some is used up by the file system and OSX takes up about 25GB.

Is there anyway to determine this? Like some kind of 'right click > properties' (a la windows?) but on the OSX folder? (where it maybe?)

Cavallino · 1 Nov 2010 at 23:08

Hello folks. If anyone could answer my above question that would be great

I also have one further question...

I just installed Messenger, and under the documents "fan out" folder in the bottom right, there is a new folder called "Microsoft User Data".

Is there anyway to relocate this? Must this be located in the Documents folder? Its just that I find it a bit messy leaving it there, since I would like to use that folder for only the current documents I am reviewing/reading at that time.

Cheers folks