my 250gb hard drive shows 232gb available

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my 250gb hard drive shows 232gb available

Currently I am attempting to restore my Macbook Pro to factory defaults so that I can sell it. I attempted to use the DVD included with the Mac to restore to Leopard (I believe). After it completed the restore I noticed that it said the hard drive was only 232gb of which 216 was available for use. I know it has a 250gb drive in it and had no issues before i attempted the restore. I was running OS X Lion before the restore. I have looked for hidden partitions but found none that would explain the 18+gb loss. Any ideas? Please help.

Thanks

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jul 9, 2012 8:26 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 9, 2012 8:32 PM in response to Howie_6497

Lion reports a "250GB" drive (actually roughly 250,000,000,000 bytes) as "250GB".

However, a gigabyte is not really 1000 MB, neither is a megabyte 1000 KB, or a kilobyte 1000 bytes - the conversion factor is actually 1024. So a 250,000,000,000 byte drive is actually more like 232GB, and previous versions of OS X will report it that way.

Either way, there's no space lost at all, it's really just a difference in the way the drive size is reported.

Matt

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Answer 2

Jul 9, 2012 8:34 PM in response to Howie_6497

Before you restored, did you use Disk Utlity (supplied with the gray disc(s)) to erase and partition the drive to one GUID partition (and also use a Secure erase - can take up to a couple of hours but all your personal info will be erased if you sell it to someone who knows how to access that information)?

Do that before re-installing Leopard and see what happens.

Clinton

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Answer 3

Howie_6497 Author

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Jul 9, 2012 8:36 PM in response to Matt Clifton

So and older version, say 10.5.7 Leopard, will show 232gb but Lion will indicate it as 250gb? Something to do with the way the software reads the drive? Weird. It makes sense and explains alot. Thanks for the info.

Tim

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Answer 4

Howie_6497 Author

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Jul 9, 2012 8:38 PM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

Clintonfrombirmingham,

I did do exactly that. Kind of why I was worried that maybe I messed something up. It took about 5-7 hours to complete the secure erase. When I finished it read 249.89gb available while under lion. Then after reload showed 232. That is why I was concerned.

Thanks again.

Tim

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Answer 5

Jul 9, 2012 9:03 PM in response to Howie_6497

Well, you went through all the right procedures - and I'm all out of idea's as to where your 18GB's went. I haven't run Leopard in so long that I don't recall if it incorrectly displays HD space (or if Lion is just better with it).

Either way, I'm sue that your new user will be pleased with it.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help,

Clinton

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