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.
Microsoft says users will be able to free up additional storage space by "creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition," but out of the box they'll be left with as little as 36 percent of the advertised storage available. The storage situation is similar to Microsoft's Surface RT tablet. The Windows RT operating system, that powers Surface RT, accounts for half of the 32GB disk space on the entry model. Microsoft's Surface Pro supports USB 3.0 hard drives and microSDXC cards, meaning there are ways to extend the storage.
Update: Microsoft supplied The Verge with inaccurate Surface Pro storage figures. The 128GB model has 89GB of storage free, not 83GB. We are unable to confirm the 64GB free storage at this time.
Update 2: Microsoft has now released the full break down for storage. The 64GB model has 29GB of free storage.
Comments
Wat.
By wownt on 01.29.13 1:24pm
It was to be expected, but hard numbers hurt.
By wownt on 01.29.13 1:25pm
I’ll say.
I’m not with people in the “Burn the Heretic!” march against how much space these OSs are taking, but to give less than 50% is nuts. I’d be ok with 50%, but after that it’s inexcusable to not put it on the box fairly prominently.
By MosquitoControl on 01.29.13 1:27pm
Usable space should be the only thing in the marketing & packaging
6.3GB on an 8GB iPod, or 13.7GB on a 16GB, right up to what Microsoft lol-worthy pass off on Surface RT & Surface Pro
Users only need to know usable, sure some geeks may need to know the full figure but they can get that from the small print, with the usable figure being advertised.
By UncleBobbings on 01.29.13 1:38pm
I don’t know if that’s totally fair. I think this case proves how inaccurate those numbers can be, but Surface is also the first device with both a quoted storage number on the box and a full desktop operating system.
In most cases, people understand that the OS and built-in content take up some of that space. And moreover, people don’t really understand how much space a GB is, so it’s similar to how a 32oz soda at McDonalds only has about 25oz of soda, with the rest being taken up by ice and empty space at the top. Nobody cares about the number, it’s just a general idea.
I don’t disagree that “actual numbers” should be readily available, but I don’t know about it being “the only number,” since the size of an OS is not a fixed number, it goes up and down as the OS is updated and optimized over time. I also think Surface is a unique case, in that I’d say that it warrants a prominent disclaimer on the box, but I don’t think an iPod or an Android phone need to point it out as prominently.
And even on Surface, you can increase the space available to you out of the box. Not just from deleting the recovery partition, but also by removing built-in apps and Windows features.
By Mark LaCroix on 01.29.13 2:42pm
Did you just ignore just about every laptop in existence?
By Tsuki on 01.29.13 3:43pm
+1
By broncobeta on 01.29.13 5:07pm
We hate +1 bra
By xtraordinarykid on 01.29.13 11:31pm
Now now. No need to resort to hosiery…..
By GumptionBrash on 01.30.13 12:42am
Since when is a bra hosiery? We’re not talking about stockings now….
By a.short.person on 01.30.13 5:13am
I think it’s sad that both you know and I know that you’re right… :-)
By GumptionBrash on 01.30.13 5:44am
The only thing worse than saying +1 is being the guy hating on the person who says +1.
Don’t be petty. Your opinion doesn’t really matter.
By broncobeta on 01.30.13 9:15am
Aw, c’mon. Don’t be the guy who hates on the guy that hated on the guy who gave the +1. Are you serious?!
By daveinpublic on 01.30.13 7:10pm
+1
By Tiredad on 01.31.13 3:55am
Damned you and your pluses!!!
By The Others on 02.03.13 9:44pm
For PCs the ratio of OS size to average hard drive size has never been anywhere near as high as what is happening on the surface pro.
Microsoft got lazy letting windows get bloated as PC hard drives got bigger – now all of a sudden when moving to a more expensive storage medium, they find they have an OS far too big to be optimal.
Apple started reducing the size of OS X with snow leopard, in preparation for SSD MacBooks.
By Kbkiwi on 01.29.13 8:28pm
Actually it was, once SSD’s hit the notebook market.
By catfoodstudios on 01.29.13 9:16pm
SSDs started hitting the notebook market in 2009 (though, for all intents and purposes, they’ve existed for decades, so we’ll assume here that we mean SSDs that are used as a replacement for harddrives in consumer electronics). Coincidentally, Snow Leopard was also released in 2009.
By MayorBloomberg on 01.30.13 4:06pm
You do realize that SSD’s have been available in laptops for several years now, and starting out, the ratio was even more horrible…
By Tsuki on 01.29.13 10:40pm
It comes with the 20 GB Microsoft office.
By seanpat05 on 01.30.13 7:06am
60GB SSDs say hi2u (of which 20GB could go to the OS). Or worse, the 40GB units. And then the 80GB, or 120GB/128GB units, which are the standard today.
My 3 year old 160GB Intel X25-M G2 is still larger than nearly all sold SSDs today (stand alone and machine-included) – despite its relative age.
The X25-M is essentially the originator of the SSD ‘revolution’.
By Xale on 01.30.13 8:54am
I use ubuntu and my base install has never been more than maybe 5-6 GB. Just felt like I had to put it out there.
By laith.khalil on 01.30.13 6:36pm
my supposedly 650gb laptop hardrive is missing 80 gigs.
By wyldfyer on 01.29.13 11:12pm
The problem is that the hard drive is sold as a 650GB drive and your OS shows it as having 570GB, but your OS is lying to you. It’s not GB that it’s showing. It’s GiB. (gibibytes)
650GB = 605GiB. Another roughly 35 GiB is consumed by your OS and other stuff installed or stored.
Basically your hard drive manufacturer uses a base 10 definition (decimal) of 1 billion and your OS uses a base 2 (binary) definition.
By descendency on 01.30.13 3:13am
The whole metrification of memory sizes is extremely irritating to those of us who know what we’re talking about. The purpose of standardisation is to simply things for people. Making them metric in this case only makes things simpler for people who don’t know much about the subject and don’t really care. (Seriously, does it make a difference to the typical customer whether when they save a file of size 1MB, whether that means 1,000KB or 1024KB?). But for everyone else it makes things more confusing. The marketing departments of Hard Drive manufacturers should be taken outside and shot given that they were the only ones really pushing for a change that was meaningless to the customer.
And on-topic, manufacturers of laptops and tablets should advertise xGB (yGB free). If you get a 64GB device and there is less than 30GB free, then we’ve gone past the point where it can be justifiably hand-waved as something people should just know about.
By h4rm0ny on 01.30.13 3:58am