Computer experts - "missing" capacity on ssd

Jeremiah

I bought a new external ssd to use for data storage (mostly Logic projects and music files) and for some reason the same files seem to take up more space on the ssd than they do on my old conventional hard disk.

For example my Logic data folder takes up around 60 Gb on the old hard drive, but when I copy it to the ssd, it shows around 65 Gb used.

The 250 Gb ssd showed as full and would not allow me to copy any more data when I had put around 170 Gb on it from the old disk, so the amount of missing space expands as the amount of actual data goes up...

Note it is not a bootable drive, so I would not expect large hidden system files; nevertheless I tried showing hidden files, and while it did reveal some, they were only a few Mb, and nothing like the discrepancy in capacity.

Other relevant information: Mac OS 10.7.5 (this is the most up to date OS I can run on my ancient Mac)
The new SSD is a Samsung T3, I have not reformatted it and left it in the default exFAT format.

Any ideas?

LooseMoose

Could be a (lack of) TRIM issue? Search out TRIM Enabler and see if that helps?

sweepy

Is t exFat a different format to NTFS or standard Mac Journalled ? This might be a reason for the different file sizes 

Maynehead

Sounds like you need to reformat it to the native file system of your operating system.

Vaiai

Yeah I'd use the Mac to format it - different formats have different sector sizes so space used can vary

Sesh

I know someone who bought a sd card from ebay which was labelled as one capacity, and when you plugged it in the PC would agree with that label, but actually, when investigated had a much lower capacity. Basically a con. Could be something similar in your case. Where did you get it from?

paul_c2

No idea with Apple Mac but on a normal Windows PC you can use the Disk Management utility to see the specifications of the hard disk and the formatted capacity - of course its possible to format only a proportion of the space. Also hard disk manufacturers like to use a different measurement than anyone else, their MB = 1000000 bytes, similarly their 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes and 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.

I suspect its due to sector size though.

Jalapeno

LooseMoose said:

Could be a (lack of) TRIM issue? Search out TRIM Enabler and see if that helps?

Thought that was included in MacOs 10 and no longer an issue (for non-Apple drives)

Bod

I believe it's to do with cluster sizes.  Files will use more logical space if the drive is formatted with larger clusters as more space will be wasted when a cluster is not used fully.  Just reformat it and specify a smaller cluster size.

Drew_TNBD

https://www.quora.com/Where-do-we-use-1-kB-1000-bytes-1-MB-1000-kB-1-GB-1000-MB-1-TB-1000-GB-And-where-do-we-use-1-KB-1024-bytes-1-MB-1024-KB-1-GB-1024-MB-1-TB-1024-GB

oaf

Bod said:

I believe it's to do with cluster sizes.  Files will use more logical space if the drive is formatted with larger clusters as more space will be wasted when a cluster is not used fully.  Just reformat it and specify a smaller cluster size.

That was my first thought - and given it's an SSD (if you want to be really geeky) you should look to align your partition(s) too...

Myranda

paul_c2 said:

No idea with Apple Mac but on a normal Windows PC you can use the Disk Management utility to see the specifications of the hard disk and the formatted capacity - of course its possible to format only a proportion of the space. Also hard disk manufacturers like to use a different measurement than anyone else, their MB = 1000000 bytes, similarly their 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes and 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.

I suspect its due to sector size though.

And by different to everyone else, you mean the industry standard that has taken quite some time to actually be adopted... IEC standards since match the SI standards for mega, kilo, giga... the Base2 counting that you're thinking of has been kibi, mebi, gibi etc since 1998 ... so your rant against hard drive manufacturers is because Microsoft hasn't bothered to update things for nearly 20 years - Open source people have been using KiB, MiB, GiB for base2 and KB, MB, GB for Base10 stuff for ages ...

And technically SSDs don't have sector sizes, because of the whole not having sectors... 

But other than that...

I would look to re-format though and try again... maybe try a more mac specific file system

Jeremiah

Thanks for the suggestions - I will try reformatting to a Mac- native format.

I left it in the default exFAT format because I read elsewhere that this format would give better performwnce as it is optimised for solid state storage (and would also allow compatibility with Windows and Android.

Just to clarify, I bought the drive new, and the total formatted capacity is showing as 250 GB as expected, it's just the used space that is showing as higher than expected from the size 0f the data.

LooseMoose

Jalapeno said:

LooseMoose said:

Could be a (lack of) TRIM issue? Search out TRIM Enabler and see if that helps?

Thought that was included in MacOs 10 and no longer an issue (for non-Apple drives)

From El Cap onwards I think (or maybe Yosemite)

Myranda

LooseMoose said:

Jalapeno said:

LooseMoose said:

Could be a (lack of) TRIM issue? Search out TRIM Enabler and see if that helps?

Thought that was included in MacOs 10 and no longer an issue (for non-Apple drives)

From El Cap onwards I think (or maybe Yosemite)

Trim should not be an issue that affects a new drive ... unless it was written to and formatted repeatedly on day one...