Hi Juelie, Standard HFS can only keep track of 65535 segments on a hard disk, no matter how big your hard disk is. That is no longer the case with HFS+. This means that the smallest segment of your external harddrive is 111.79GB divided by 65535 which is about 1.8 MB. You can check if that is the size of your smallest file. And if you have sufficient small files, they will add up!
Standard HFS was only standard until MacOS8.0, as the drives back then were so small that it didn't matter, but just going from 8.0 with HFS to 8.1 with HFS+ gave me 20-25% more space on my old 1.2 GB drive back then, so I am not terribly surprised to hear about your experience. If I were you, I would probably just reinitialize the external drive using HFS+ instead. It has fewer limitations than HFS. Cheers, Kim On 23/01/04 0:16, "Juelie McLean" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I recently purchased an external 120GB (8MB) Seagate hard drive. I > wanted to use it to back up my iMac DV SE. So the other night, I > copied my iMac HD onto my external drive. But the math doesn't add > up? > > My iMac says my HD capacity is 12.75GB and I still have 8.19GB available. > > My external HD says capacity is 111.79GB, but after copying my iMac > HD, it says I only have 39GB available. > > If my iMac says I am using 4-5GB.....how did it come up to be over > 70GB when copied to the external drive? > > My iMac HD is extended HFS+ and the external HD is standard HFS. Is > this somehow the difference? > When I initialized my external HD, did I do it wrong? > > Any assistance on understanding this would be greatly appreciated! > > Thanks, > -- -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
