I got a question recently about how to determine your iBook’s hard drive size.
It’s very easy to determine your iBook’s hard drive size, and the same basic steps work for any Mac (any Apple computer including iBook, Powerbook, iMac, MacBook, etc.). I’ll explain two different ways to find out your Mac’s hard drive size in this article.
First off, the hard drive size is usually printed on the computer somewhere — where this label is varies from computer to computer — in the case of an iBook you can usually find the label with the hard drive size and other information underneath the keyboard.
Just gently pull the two sliding tabs on the top edge of the keyboard towards you while gently pulling upwards, and the keyboard should lift up. Underneath, you’ll find the serial number and other information about your iBook.
So that’s one way how to determine your iBook’s hard disk size.
On other Mac models this information is printed on the base of the computer, or sometimes in other places.
In all cases, the size printed on the computer may be out of date if you’ve ever had your computer’s hard drive upgraded, so let’s talk about another way how to determine your iBook’s hard drive size.
This way doesn’t involve lifting up the keyboard (which some people are not comfortable doing) and it doesn’t involve flipping the computer upside down like you have to do to read the label on many iMacs.
On any Mac you can easily find out the hard disk size, plus how much free space you have, by clicking once on the hard drive icon on your desktop.
On most Macs, the hard drive is called Macintosh HD, but some people rename it. In most cases, it’s a rectangular metallic icon, which you’ll usually find sitting on the upper right-hand corner of your desktop.
So click the drive once, which will highlight the drive. Then go to the File menu on the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the file menu, you’ll see a menu option called Get Info. Click the Get Info menu option in the File menu, and a new window will open with a lot of detailed information about the hard drive.
What you want to look for is “capacity” which is the full size of the hard drive, usually measured in GB, or Gigabytes, on a modern computer. Underneath capacity you will see more information about how much space is available, and how much is used.
As a side note, it is normal for all computers — iBooks, iMacs or any other type of Apple Macintosh computer, as well as Windows PCs of any brand name — to show fewer gigabytes or megabytes than what is listed on the label on the computer, on the sales receipt, or elsewhere.
For example, if you have a 60 gigabyte hard drive, it is normal for it to appear to be 55gb or so.
A simple way to think about this is like the foundation of a house: when you have just the foundation, it may have 1400 square feet, but once you’ve built the walls, etc. the real square feet will be less. This is because the walls take up some of that space. It works kind of the same way with a hard drive.
So again, one way how to determine your iBook’s drive size, or the drive size of any Apple Mac computer is to click on the drive (once) and then click Get Info in the File menu.