Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

storage/how much space available on 500GB hd if used w/mac?

Sep 1, 2006 8:53PM PDT

From what I understand a new 500GB has less that 500GB availabl due to configuration etc. Can anybody tell me, how much 500GB I can actually use? I have 464GB of film video and sound material which I'd like to store on an external hd. Now, I'm wondering if a 500GB disk will be enough. Couldn't find any infos on the manufacturer's websites either...

thanks for your help! best, Nicole

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Depends on various
Sep 1, 2006 10:45PM PDT

Hi Nicole,

From what I understand there are several methods used by Hard Drive Mfgrs. of reporting the size of a HD.
In any event to answer your question the actual size of the HD will also be less than the published size.
Sounds like you will need another drive anyway based on the amound of data that you will want to store.
Avoid partition on HD that also uses up space and is pointless with the new H.D.'s.

If you want to operate smothly you should not take up more than 75 percent of your hard drive so that your data has room to move. If you really value your data it should be in two seperate locations so that if one area is lost, you have the other as a backup.

The amount of data you stated is what you calculate as of today. Try to anticipate your expected needs for storage and buy enough equipt. to cover your needs. Remember, eventually these hard drives will fail and you will need to buy newer storage methods so you can preserve your precious data.

I would say start transferring your data to the new HD and once you are around 75 percent that should give you a good barometer on what you will need to buy.

Hope this helps
Gilbert

- Collapse -
Hard Drive Capacities
Sep 2, 2006 1:06AM PDT

It has long been a bone of contention that HD sizes stated on the box, in your case 500GB, is not actually the size that the OS displays once you have it in the computer.

"Modern operating systems such as Mac OS X use binary mathematics to define the total capacity of a hard drive. Using binary math, an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard drive reports approximately 74.51 GB of available space.

In binary math, 1 GB is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes, whereas conventional (or base 10) mathematics instead calculate 1 GB as exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes."

Using your trusty OS X calculator, you will see that your 500GB drive measured in conventional mathematics has a 500,000,000,000 byte capacity.
The drive size as reported in Binary math is 500000000000 divided by 1,073,741,824 (the number of bytes in a GB in Binary math) which gives 465.661287307739 GB or roughly 465.6 GB

In your case, this 500GB drive would hold 465.6 GB of data which is just enough room for your current requirements. This leaves no room for expansion.

You have not said what computer you are planning on using this 500GB drive with so I will assume that it is going to be an external drive in a Firewire enclosure. You might want to consider getting another one, a matching pair.

Hope that makes sense

P

- Collapse -
Hard Drive Capacity
Sep 2, 2006 1:23AM PDT

Also have a look at about my computer in OS X

I have a powerbook G3 Laptop that has a Fujitsu HD at a stated 4.54 GB (don't laugh).. When I look at my profile for my computer it shows ATA drive drive capacity of 4.41 GB. Another illustration of published capacity and "useable capacity" again you have to back out the est. 25% for operating space vs usuable room for data. After the install of 10.3.9 with several small applications installed I have 2.92GB "theoretically" available. Naturally I had to trash IE all the unnecessary printer drivers, foreign languages. Since I only use G3 powerbook architecture I also trashed G4,G5, Intel, 64 bit and all of the other items not applicable to my OS. This will gain you much room in your system. Keep in mind every time you update OS X it will add back many foreign languages into your sytem. I use monolingual to safely remove any unnecessary data from my system.

- Collapse -
how safe are ext. drives? thanks mrmacfixit&gilbertwihite1!
Sep 2, 2006 2:35AM PDT

I need to transfer footage from a borrowed 7TB XServe Raid. It's been an extreme luxury working with the RAID but now I have to give it back... I've got the footage mirrored on the two partitions of the RAID and it gives me great peace of mind in case anything happens. Plus, the RAID responds very fast and so far I have experienced only 1 crash (after working with it and editing for 3 months in final cut pro). however, now is the time to downsize -

I've got a very tight budget, so as much as I'd like to buy more & faster storage, I need to stick to what is really necessary. That's why I'm calculating how much space is actually needed right now in order to transfer the data.

I can still keep & use the borrowed G5 Quad which I currently work on, later I'll switch to a MacBook Pro (with 80GB and 512MB RAM only :-/ I hope final cut still works...) and the 500GB drive will be used w/Firewire 400 - does that make a difference in terms of how much space I need?

Is an external hard drive safe or do I risk to loose the footage if i don't buy 2 drives and mirror the content?

Your help is much appreciated! Nicole

- Collapse -
Safety
Sep 2, 2006 3:10AM PDT

an external drive is as safe as an internal drive, given that they are the same mechanism.
Nothing is "safe" until you back it up to removable media and store it off site and that includes a Raid system that mirrors the disks. It is unlikely that both disks will fail at the same time, or that the house will burn down or that your electric company will give you 240V instead of 110V, but it has happened.
At work I use a 1TB, 4 drive Raid system, but we still back up the contents every night to tape. Copy at the bank, copy in house and copy in the tape drive. Rotates out every 3 weeks.

To answer your last question a little more dramatically, you risk loosing all the footage if you do not have a backup of it.

P

- Collapse -
one more question regarding space/hd
Sep 3, 2006 9:48PM PDT

The hd seller told me, that I actually another 10% space on the hd, so that the computer can store temp. data while working w/the data that is stored on the hd. Otherwise I might experience trouble (freezes, etc.) Is that true?

- Collapse -
Required HD Space
Sep 3, 2006 10:25PM PDT

Hi Nicole,

If I understand the sales persons statement, they are saying fill the HD data up to 90% and leave 10% as working space for the HD?...that is not enough for your hard drive to do the required work. You should have at least twenty to twenty five percent of disk available. Another consideration is your future needs on storage, you might as well consider the future a bit. You may end up needing a third external drive soon unless you properly plan your needs.

mrmacfixit will probably ask you what computer(s) you plan to use with these new external hard drives?
This will have a bearing on what types of drives you buy and how they will be formatted? I would provide as much info as possible so you buy the right gear for your projects?

Gilbert

- Collapse -
Hard Drives
Sep 3, 2006 11:01PM PDT

If the drive is only used to store data and is not accessed on a regular basis, then the 10% free space should be ok. However, working with this video in FCP, requires that the system be able to manipulate that data. This is usually done on a "scratch" disk and is "usually" the boot volume. On many programs it is possible for designate which drive you wish to use as a Scratch disk. (Adobe does this with Photoshop)
20% free space on the boot volume should be sufficient, coupled with lots of memory.
Now if I read your post as you wrote it, if the HD Seller was telling you that there is another 10% drive capacity that is hidden from the user and which is used by the computer for temporary storage, they are talking from a place where the sun don't shine.
A drive has whatever capacity is printed on the box, and nothing more or less.

Let us know what machine you plan to get so we can get into the type of drive you should purchase.

P

- Collapse -
computers... to go w/the drive
Sep 4, 2006 7:56AM PDT

first of all: thanks a lot for your help!

I'm buying the drive for one specific project I'm currently working on. Of course I'm going to use it later for other stuff, but now my priority is being able to continue working smoothly with the footage I already have - it woun't add up (I'm battling already w/the 35hrs footage which need to be condensed into 90min...)

I'm currently finishing the project on a borrowed PowerMac 7.5 G5, 2Ghz, 2 GB DDR SDRAM (at least that's what it says under "about this mac"). I will be able to keep this machine for another while - at least that's what I've been promised.
Once I have to return it, I will continue the work on a MacBookPro 15" w/a Intel Core Duo and just 512 MB RAM (I know, that's ridiculous... I very likely will be forced to add more memory... I know - which is why I can't spend too much money on the drive)

and well... the drive will not be used just for storage - i will use it to work with the data that's on it and I'll probably also put the scratch disk on that drive (the MacbookPro hd has got 80 GB and there's not much left, about 18 GB...)

I found a decent deal on a LaCie 500GB big disk extreme - any recommandations? warnings? anything else I should know about it? I might be able to throw in a bit more and get the 600 GB but that's pretty much my financial limit... (unfortunately prices in Europe aren't that competitive like in the US...)

I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts about my configuration and the drive!

also: is it realistic at all to work w/shake with this configuration? and this drive? or would I need a far bigger and faster one (the MacBook Pro has got only a Firewire 400 - until now it goes through the 800 which is quite fast and nice...

- Collapse -
Drives
Sep 4, 2006 12:02PM PDT

I stole this directly from the Apple site. It is just a small portion of the article:

if you choose to use a FireWire hard drive, make sure it meets these requirements:

The drive is the only device on the FireWire bus.
The drive's speed is at least 7200 RPM.
The drive can sustain minimum data rates appropriate for your video format (3.7 MB/s for DV).
The drive uses a modern, high-performance bridge chip such as the Oxford 911 or 922.
The drive uses its own power supply, and is not powered from the FireWire bus.

The full link is http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58636 and deals with the use of external drives and Final Cut Pro.
I like the LaCie devices but you have to remember that LaCie do not make the drives, they only make the cases that they come in. Warranty with them will be 1 year, usually, but you may be able to buy a drive with a much longer warranty. Seagate does a 5 year full replacement. All you need then is a Firewire case to put it in. This is also the cheaper route, usually.

As for Shake: I will leave you with this snippet to ponder:

Minimum Hardware and Software Configuration
?
Power Mac G5; Power Mac G4 or PowerBook G4 with 1 GHz or faster PowerPC G4
processor
?
Mac OS X v10.3.9 or Mac OS X v10.4 (or later)
?
QuickTime 7 (or later)
?
512 MB of RAM minimum?1 GB RAM or more recommended
?
1 GB of available disk space for caching and for temporary files
?
AGP graphics card with at least 32 MB of video memory and OpenGL hardware
acceleration
?
Display supporting 1280 x 1024-pixel resolution and 24-bit color, with 32MB or more
of VRAM and Open GL hardware acceleration
?
Three-button mouse
Minimum Requirements for Render-Only Workstations
The Shake 4.0 render-only workstation requires the following minimum hardware and
software configuration:
?
500 Mhz or higher PowerPC G4
?
PowerPC G4 refers to any Tower, PowerBook, iMac, eMac over 500 Mhz.
?
1 Ghz PowerPC G4 or higher XServe
?
Mac Mac OS X v10.3.9 or Mac OS X v10.4 (or later)
?
QuickTime 7 (or later)
?
1 GB local disk space for caching and temporary files
?
256 MB of RAM
RAM Requirements
Real-time playback is a function of RAM, processor, image size, clip length, and graphics
card. In Shake, images are loaded into memory and then played back. Current systems
cannot achieve real-time playback with 2K-resolution images. With sufficient RAM and
a good graphics card, files of up to 1K resolution should play back in real time.
Use the following formula to determine the amount of required memory:
width * height * channels * bytes per channel * images = bytes
For example, a single 1024 x 768 RGB 8-bit (1 byte) per channel image is:
1024 * 768 * 3 * 1 = 2359296 bytes
Or, approximately 2.4 MB per frame.

Looks like you might need a part time job Happy

P