Storage Capacity on first startup

[PP763]

Just got a 256GB version and on startup it says capacity of 248.58GB and the availible is about 4GB less. Am i correct in assuming that the 248.58 is taking into account the operating system space

 

[Matty]

Just got a 256GB version and on startup it says capacity of 248.58GB and the availible is about 4GB less. Am i correct in assuming that the 248.58 is taking into account the operating system space

Bottom line, everything is OK.

Without getting to technical, when you purchase a storage size from a manufacture they measure 1 GB as 1,000 MB. instead of 1,024 MB. So every GB you pay for, you actually lose out on a small amount. This is normal and nothing to worry about.

 

[PP763]

Many thanks for the quick reply. It also had 44 minutes on the call time counter. Ive googled this and some people say it could be to do with either testing in the factory or from icloud. Have you come across this?

 

[dpham00]

You should have 238gb of actual storage. Usable would be actual storage less os

 

[TwitchyPuppy]

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You should have 238gb of actual storage. Usable would be actual storage less os

Not necessarily. It depends on how the OS is optimized.

 

[dpham00]

Not necessarily. It depends on how the OS is optimized.

That's simply the physical usable space of a 256gb drive. Didn't even include OS.

 

[iN8ter]

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You should have 238gb of actual storage. Usable would be actual storage less os

This makes literally no sense.

You're converting from GB to GiB and then telling the user they should have <X> GB of available storage, while using the number you converted to GiB. This is like reading writing French and telling someone it's English text.

The Space lost is due to formatting, as is common.

The phone reports GB, so it's calculating storage as GB, not GiB. This is completely different from how the storage volumes were manufactured. If the storage manufacturer used GiB, then the GB calculation of the OS will expose that by reporting a lower maximum GB capacity. The numbers you converted clearly show this is not the case. Otherwise, the number would be lower. Also, there is (from what I see) not the standard disclaimer that virtually all hard drives/SSDs manufacturers this way contain telling the user that a different measurement was used.

Formatting a drive will result in space lost. You cannot install an OS on a RAW storage volume. It has to be formatted, so you will never get the full capacity. This is true even if they use 1,024MB = GB for storage calculation and reporting.

Additionally, File Systems have different allocation block sizes, and typically a file smaller than the allocation unit is going to occupy the size of one allocation block. If you create a 1byte text file on your hard drive, and your FS has 16KB blocks, the file will still take up 16KB on disk. As a result, there is "leakage" of storage as you put more files on the device, particularly lots of large files.

Example from my Mac: