“Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet, due on February 9th, will have a smaller amount of storage space than expected. A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.” Oh Microsoft.
Microsoft just needs to be clear about the storage allocation.
If you look at your iPhone, you will see that a 32GB phone, really only has about 28GB, after accounting for the space that the iOS image takes up.
It really looks bad here, because Windows 8 Pro takes up so much space, whereas a mobile OS like iOS (or Windows RT or Windows Phone 8, for that matter) takes up a lot less storage space.
28 GB out of 32 GB as compared to 23 GB out of 64 GB.
Are you seriously saying this is the same?
And, even that. I have an iPhone 4 and right after a factory reset there are more than 28 GB of free space. Apple is just using SI units which shows smaller numbers.
Adrian
“SI-units”, which are in fact not standardized for this purpose, are showing higher numbers than binary prefixes.
28 x 10^9 = 26,077 x 2^30
And because theverge, the at the moment only source of information, mixed the prefixes also last time, when they reported about diskspace usage of Windows RT, I would suspect that they did mix it up again 🙂
And finally there are other tablets and convertibles with Windows 8 already available on the market (by Samsung, Sony and others), using 64 Gb and 128 GB SSDs, so the news aren’t really news.
Edited 2013-01-30 19:45 UTC
Are you sure that’s not the standard storage issue where 32000000000 bytes is actually under 30GiB? That’s usually where formatting “loses” space in disks.
Yes it has to do with the fact that iOS still reports storage in binary base whereas OS X switched to the decimal system a couple of years ago.
OSX doesn’t display sizes in gibibytes? Heresy!
Edited 2013-01-29 23:33 UTC
$ gb used as opposed to 41 gb. For your example, that breaks down to:
32 gb iPhone: 12.5% of space used, btw a good chunk of that is simply filesystem overhead and other formatting, not to mention the 1024 vs 1000 byte marketing tactic.
Surface Pro: 64% of the disk space used and, while roughly the same amount as the iPhone goes to filesystem overhead not to mention the same marketing tactics as above, that’s certainly not true for the rest of the used space. This is false marketing, pure and simple because, at the $899 entry price, no one would ever buy a tablet marketed as having 23 gb of useable space. That would expose it as the rip-off that it is.
Agreed. No doubts some customers will sue Microsoft for that but it may still pay out.
So, why needs Win8 Pro so much more then Win8 RT?
“a good chunk of that is simply filesystem overhead and other formatting”
Filesystem overhead and formatting is simple speak for the difference between decimal and binary storage capacities. Formatting uses almost no disk space, and there is no such thing as “filesystem overhead”. Do the maths and you’ll find that your formatted hard drive has almost exactly the capacity in Windows (the OSX thing is new to me so can’t comment) as the manufacturer specified, except the manufacturer wrote something like “1 GB = 1 billion bytes” on the box but Microsoft coded it as 1024*1024*1024 bytes which is a bit different when you get to the TB range.
I don’t see the the problem really. There are two types of people.
1, Those who care about computers will not buy it. They wont complain.
2, Those who don’t care about computers and will buy it. They wont complain.
So it is perfectly ok.
Edited 2013-01-29 19:17 UTC
You forgot one.
3, Those who care about computers who will buy it. And won’t complain.
Your post seems to be truncated, it misses: “because they will install android.”
You forgot one, too..
4, Those who like complaining. Period.
3. Those who don’t like to be cheated: they will complain. Or they won’t buy it.
Edited 2013-01-29 21:11 UTC
So…as long as no-one is complaining it’s perfectly ok to cheat people. That’s some seriously screwed up reasoning.
Basically yes.
Think about it the next time you go buy shoes.
Basically, that’s why we have consumer rights, regulations on misleading advertising and safety standards.
I have a similar setup at home. Windows 8 media center PC with a 64GB SSD, and the free space is very similar (almost nothing installed on that machine except for VLC, WMC, and stuff).
But the problem is having the backup partition on the precious SSD space. I have a 8GB USB for re-installation, and would not waste 20GB on a backup partition. It would had been much better if they did something similar – a USB backup that costs $10, and free up 20GB of storage.
You will care when you want to put your videos, music, or whatever else and you find you have to insert an SD card, or attach a USB drive.
Maybe it is just to have a cheap entry model price-point.
(Also remember things take storage while processing – you usually need to have both the old and new versions and may need them uncompressed while editing).
Steve Jobs described the PC as a truck. This is like a micro-pickup. A washer and dryer will need two trips.
Maybe they are trying to push cloud storage. But then it looks as they are making a very expensive, slow, cumbersome, chromebook.
The abyss is just beneath the surface.
You mean I might have to put videos and music on an SD card? Oh my god, THE HORROR!!!! What’s wrong, Android fanboys got you brainwashed into believing that SD cards are evil, now that Nexus devices don’t have them?
It eats more battery since when you listen to music it seeks and reads around your SD while swapping to another.
Then 23G free isn’t even plenty for apps either. Install Office, some games and full. Win8 doesn’t allow to install apps and games to SDs or does it?
I assume there was no time left to optimize disk-size for Pro. Maybe to much other problems.
Edited 2013-01-29 23:31 UTC
Also its 23GB with a fresh install. That will decrease with any update, service-pack, security-fix.c
No, us fanboys figured that if somebody’s going to drop 900 bucks on a tablet computer, it better deliver what it promises.
To use a car analogy, you’re defending this kind of proposition:
Car salesman: “We have this brand-new super fuel-efficient car! 64mpg!”
Car buyer: “But after I bought it, I can only get 23mpg. What gives?”
Car salesman: “Yeeah, you see, that figure didn’t include the engine, the chassis and any passengers.”
To only deliver 1/3 of the storage you put on the box, that’s not only misleading, it is just simply lying to your customers. If these figures are accurate, MS simply fucked up here. They either need to cut down on the cruft, or give their customers a serious rebate (or accept a device return). No chance they can sell this labeled as a 64GB model in the EU, they’re gonna get their asses handed to them for false advertisement.
So much bloatware?
DoubleSpace, where are thou ?
Kochise
It is called features.
Think of your average person, booting up and after a while realising that the available storage space is much less than he expects.
I’m pretty sure that he’ll assume something is wrong.
It’s very hard for me to comprehend how any of the people in charge at Microsoft gave their approval to this mess.
All of these people talking about a desktop OS taking up more space than a mobile OS need to look outside the Microsoft compound. I have Linux Mint 14, plus a few apps, and some games, installed on a 15 GB partition on my ultrabook. I’m nowhere near fully using that.
How big is your recovery partition?
A Linux Mint recovery partition? If he had such a thing (which would surprise me) it would be less than 1GiB.
You only need a recovery if you have to assume the system may break. Windows was the topic? Nevermind. Recovery very much needed.
Edited 2013-01-29 23:36 UTC
Windows doesn’t break anymore not since Vista. You have to try very hard to do it. The only failure problems have been hardware not software.
So if windows doesn’t break anymore, why include the recovery partition?
I dunno you can break it, you might want to start again … lots of reasons. It called a backup/recovery it for emergency.
I work in a small computer store, and a couple of times a month, people end up with some corrupted data or other, preventing their OS from booting, or some updates that didn’t install correctly, preventing the OS from loading. Windows breaks far too frequently.
And I would wager the problem behind all of that was hardware failure or the hardware is going buy buy and it just isn’t immediately apparent.
I’ve had problems with Windows 8 recently, it was due to a stick of ram being busted, the last time I’ve had problems with 7 was due to a dying hardisk.
Most of the time, if Windows won’t boot, it is due to a hardware failure, but sometimes data just becomes corrupted, and everything tests fine. Also, the case where a computer loses power installing updates is quite common, and it’s often beyond a restore point, or a repair.
Nothing just becomes corrupted, users lie all the time.
I suspect other OSes would have problems coming back to life after being left in some half state. I normally have a system image I can go back to if there are any problems.
A “recovery partition” for Linux Mint 14 would be the installation media.
It depends on which desktop you opt for, since Linux Mint 14 comes in cinamon, mate, xfce and kde variants, but “around about one gigabyte” is a fair enough approximation.
Here is a mirror for the .iso files which one can download:
http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/linuxmint/stable/14/
All variants would not fit on a LiveCD, so a LiveDVD or LiveUSB is required. For an Ultrabook, a LiveDVD is suitable, but for a tablet or netbook or a machine such as the Surface, a LiveUSB would be more the go.
So, since a LiveDVD or LiveUSB made from one of those .iso files is separate media, the answer to your question: “How big is your recovery partition?” is … zero. Recovery data is kept on separate media.
Do you mean his home partition ? AFAIK, most Linux distros have no such thing as a recovery partition, and I’m positive that Mint hasn’t.
Microsoft obviously hasn’t got any sort of culture of looking out for disc space. Until Windows 7 they didn’t seem to give a damn about memory and processor resources either. The Vista fiasco changed that; so perhaps the focus on mobile and the disc-austerity that comes with that will force them to do the same after Windows 8.
They really need that cultural change because, seriously, Windows 8 just doesn’t have that much more functionality than a comparable OS* that fits on an 8GiB disc with space for a bucket load of packages/programmes.
*Hint: GNULinux, WinXP, Everything else.
The basic Windows 8 installation file for 64 bit is called “E:\sources\install.wim” and is 2.5 GB big. This is exactly how much a rescue file/partition would take.
Unpacked this file would be be roughly 8 GB for the Enterprise edition
Even if I would add diskspace for a swapfile AND a hibernate file (nobody would use hibernate on such a device) AND dozens of apps I just don’t see any way how this would become 41 GB.
I actually have a domain joined Windows 8 + Office 2013 + SQL Server (Express with tools) 2012 + VS Studio 2010 (VB, C# and C++) + patches and MANY more home-apps/progs/tools and that is 23 GB in total
I was already wondering the same on the Surface RT. a 32 bits x86 Win8 is 5 GB unpacked from a 2 GB wim file. Add 1 GB for Office 2013 and the total becomes 8
Can anyone with such a device tell me where all that diskspace is going?
Edited 2013-01-29 22:41 UTC
I’m sure this will get answered as soon as Surface Pro hits the store shelves. This can still be a misleading early report, so take these figures with a grain of salt.
Where has all the disk space gone? Long time passing…
<a href=”http://www.osnews.com/permalink?542774“>This break down in the linked article probably still applies.
Express isn’t really that large. My SQL Server 2008 R2 install DVD is about 3GB and VS 2010 is massive.
Wait until the user discovers that there is no built-in Wifi, it requires a full size USB dongle
I think you mean 3G radio, right? Shipping this without Wifi would be suicide.
Without wifi, MS wouldn’t have enough cable to hang themselves with.
It’s not the best showing, but I imagine a good chunk of that space is tied up in a few things:
There’s probably a 4 or 8 gig page file.
There’s probably a 3 or 4 gig hibernation file.
There’s probably a sizable restore partition.
There’s probably a sizable backup partition.
There’s probably a sizable cache of drivers.
Those features are yours to give up with the proper configuration and cleansing of the drive but, such as they are, they cost disk space.
I hope and assume they’ve done due diligence in getting rid of anything frivolous that would not be easily removed by an end user, but this story isn’t entirely new.
I recently bought a laptop and installed a 256GB SSD and 32 gigabytes of RAM — Because the size of the page file and hibernation file are based on the amount of installed RAM, they were eating up near 50GB of disk space on their own. I disabled both, as SSD and gobs of RAM negate the need for either (I can sleep the machine, but not hibernate it).
Well, who the H buys a computer with a 64GB drive in 2013 anyway?
Are they complaining that the CGA-screen they chose cant do 1080P too?
I really don’t understand the need for a hibernate file anymore. It actually takes longer now to restore from a hibernate file than to do a clean reboot. So I assume they simply disable hibernating and use sleep+connected standby. The only reason I could think of why they would enable hibernate is for “your battery is at 1%, now saving everything and closing down” scenarios.
Swapfiles should never be entirely disabled, but they don’t have to be many gigabytes of data either
And as I have mentioned, a restore file only needs to be 2.5 gig, even with multiple restore points in it (Microsofts own WIM is an excellent format for storing these images and can be restored with built in tools)
Can anyone provide diskspace numbers for the Surface RT?
But then you have to reopen apps and reload data. And remember to save it before closing again. For me it’s a waste of battery time.
Shutdown: No diskspace needed, turn off/on in 15 seconds, no battery wasted, everything is closed
Hibernate: Needs as much diskspace as you have memory, turn off/on in 1 minute (depending on diskspeed and amount of memory to write/read), no battery wasted, just continue working
Standby: No diskspace needed, turn off/on in 1 second, battery decreases 10% per 24 hours (so 7% before I start working again or 3 percent while I sleep), just continue working
For me hibernate only wins when you have battery issues and plenty of diskspace and time that you don’t mind wasting. In all other scenarios standby wins.
On the surface battery life is not an issue but diskspace and time are, so standby should be used instead of hibernate.
(I loved hibernate when I used Windows XP with 1 GB of RAM. It only took 20 seconds to hibernate/restore but rebooting took 1 minute and standby sucked 50% per day)
That’s why I like it. I have no more than 3 gigs of ram on my machines. Saves/restores my desktop mess in one minute.
so you only get 23 Gbs from a 64 GBs (as advertised) device…. how lovely! That sucks, no matter how you wanna see it.
As a side note, about people asking why the bare system would take up 41 GBs when compared with a regular desktop/laptop/netbook, whatever, even with a lot of software installed on them. Keep in mind that ARM binaries tend to be larger than x86 binaries due to the fact that all instructions on 32-bit ARM (unless using thumb) are 4-byte long unlike x86 which has a variable length for instructions.
I think that’s still no excuse for having a system take 41 GBs as a whole when “just installed” but it’s a factor when making the comparison.
I for one won’t buy any, for sure… even it it only took 1 GB of room and let me with 63 GBs to play with.
As I said:
Win 8 x86 = 5 GB
Win 8 x64 = 8 GB
That difference is only partly because x64 binaries are bigger than x86 binaries. The real difference are all the bits and pieces that are present in both x64 and x86 despite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64.
I am a big Windows lover, but losing this much space is WAY over the top. I have less space left on a 64 GB Surface Pro than on a 32 GB iPad.
Just for experimenting I extracted the Windows 8 x64 Enterprise wim file to a 16 GB USB Stick (effectively creating a 16 GB Windows 8 To Go), booted from it, finished the installation, kept the default apps, installed drivers and Office and everything still worked. About 4 GB diskspace remaining, so all that is actually needed for a working Surface 8 Pro + Office 2013 is 12 GB.
If I can do it in half a day and with only the tools that are available by default in Windows 8 then Microsoft should be able to do a much better job
An excellent point, except that we’re talking about Surface Pro which does not run on ARM, but on X64.
No shit! Oh, well…. I stand corrected. It’s utter crap 😀
Well, I think we agree on that one.
RT also has a lot of space clogged up, though not nearly as much as this does. Surface RT tablets have, if I remember correctly, 12 gb of space taken. That’s still far too much when the entry model is a 32 gb tablet, but even that’s not half as bad as Surface Pro considering that, on the 64 gb entry model, almost 2/3 of your disk space is taken before you put anything of your own on there.