What's the formatted HDD space on a MBP?

You all know what I mean ... You buy a 200 GB computer but only 190 GB is made accessible to you. I know why I don't get all 200 GB I pay for, and this thread wasn't made for anyone to discuss that.

All I want to know is if I get a 500 GB 13" MBP today ... How much HDD space will be made available to me per "My system" or "My Mac" (Whatever is the Apple equivalent of right clicking and hitting properties in Windows).

I want a 500 GB HDD because I want to carry my Time Machine backups with me. By the way, I've never owned a Mac ... I've toyed around with them at Bestbuy and what not, I don't need OSX, but I just cannot find another laptop that has the style and durability of a aluminum chassis of the MBP.

EDIT: On a side note, would it be cheaper to get the 13" stock model and upgrade the HDD myself? Does anyone know what 2.5" HDDs out there are compatible with the MBP? I'm hoping to get a 500GB or 1TB (7200 rpm) version. Thanks.

 

are you sure you really know why its less?

if you look at a 500GB drive in Snow Leopard, it will report that there is 500GB drive available (unless sits your OS drive it will have 5 to 10GB eaten up depending what you've installed of course). This is because its counting properly, the same way hard drive manufacturers do it.

 

Carrying your Time Machine backups around with you is really stupid. What happens if you lose your laptop? There go your backups! What happens if the drive completely dies? There go your backups!

If you insist on carrying your backups with you, get an external drive and carry it in a different bag if you go travelling so at least the odds of losing both bags are lower than just one.

 

they are standard hard drives you put in any other laptop... 2.5" SATAII drives. It can be cheaper to do yourself if you really want to and shop around.

 

Umm... like Khris said, that's EXTREMELY stupid and defeats the purpose of time machine. You are better off not using time machine at all and having more space to be honest. Instead of looking into upgrading the hard drive, look into buying an external HD and using that for your time machine backups.

 

hitachi 500GB 7200 RPM is a good choice for a HDD. Can be found for under $100. I've not looked recently within the last month or so... there may be better/faster/quieter/more efficient drives out now, not sure. But the 7200rpm 500GB Hitachis have been great.

I won't say "stupid"... I agree that it is tempting with a large internal master drive to use it for backups. But archiving, version control, backups, etc should be done to a separate drive. Preferably external. A 2nd internal drive for backups is still better than backing up to the same/single drive. But if you lose, damage, drop the mbp into the pool, etc... then of course both master and backup drives are lost.

I make my backups using one of the many external hdd "toasters" available. I have a few bare-bone HDDs that I rotate through each week and I keep them locked in a fireproof safe at home. Simply pop in a HDD into the toaster, connect to my MBP (mine is via eSata express card... yours would be with firewire 800) and begin the backup, clone, sync, timemachine, or whatever.

 

I'm not understanding you clearly it seems.

Do you mean to say that if I order a 500 GB MBP ... The total capacity on the OS drive (There's only one anyway) will be reported as "500 GB" while the available capacity on that same drive will be reported as something like "430 GB" depending on the what programs/files I have installed.

Is that what you mean?

It's not my primary computer, I use a Desktop most of the time and am passing on my current laptop to my sister ... I just need something to take along with me when I visit my family from time to time. I'm not sure about OSX but with Vista I had to system restore 'on the road' sometimes due to some driver conflicts and what not ... I am not creating backups because I expect a HDD to fail on me ... It hasn't happened yet and is very unlikely.

That being said, I do agree that the proper way to back things up is on an external HDD.

 

Windows thinks a GB is 1073741824 bytes, while a Hard Drive manufacturer thinks its 1000000000 bytes. Windows is a tricky and thinks gibibytes is gigabytes for some reason, which has never been fixed, I don't know why.

 

Not really Windows' fault.

Windows has it right:
1 kb = 1024 bytes or 2^10 bytes

All engineering disciplines use this notation.

I honestly do not know where the scheme of 1kb = 1000 bytes originated but if I had to guess I would pin it on marketing tactics to squeeze more dollar per byte.

That being said, it seems most of you are telling me that in "My Mac/System/Whatever" I will be seeing the 500 GB and not some other oddball number.

Good to know, the space isn't that important, I just wanted to know how OSX dealt with that.

 

oh no! You just cursed your next HDD to fail within 6 months

 

thats not true... kilo means 1000, not 1024.

a kilo binary byte is 1024
a kilo byte is 1000

kilobyte = kb
kilo binary byte = kibibyte = kib

The computer industry started using the metric prefixes incorrectly, and shortly afterwards the binary versions were made so it would be kibibyte and gibibyte etc... so you know its a base 2 number... but the computer industry didnt want to change what they started because it was so little difference at the time, and they stuck with it... as sizes get larger and larger, it gets more noticeable.

A 500GB drive has 500GB of space yet only ~430GiB... just most OSes report back GiB counting but call it GB.

since OSX 10.6 Apple added proper counting, so if you look at a 500GB drive, it will report back 500GB usable space.

 

Got it, thanks for the explanation.

 

The amount of space on the drive doesn't change because of how you count it. The important thing is weather you have enough room to do what you want with the drive.