How to understand partition sizes

[illoai at gmail.com]

On 04/06/07, Olivier Nicole <on at cs.ait.ac.th> wrote:
> > The /server is 9Gb smaller than I partitioned and the actual free space
> > without any files in the partition is shown as 396.5Gb which is another
> > 34.5Gb smaller.
>
> The number of disk sectors/blocks allocated to a partition at install
> is reduced by the amount of space taken by the system to put file
> system information (table of inodes, etc.) plus some percentage of
> space kept for security reason (so the operating system can fill up
> your partition by more than 100% in case of emergency).

There is also the fact that your "500GB" drive is
not actually 500GB.

I think there is even a FAQ entry about this.

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