Internal drive shows up only 5.8GB available on 8GB drive

[Jaisudha]

Hello Folks,
On my A90 I installed OSX,I aided a guide and created a bootable flash drive without any problems from a 10.5.6 retail disc.but my disk utility and partition the drive shows a 5.8GB available out of max size of 6.8GB.but genuinely i got 8gb ,so i thought about about splitting the drive into small partitions in order to install.but still says it's being used. can it be an error which linked with the installer that's modified by the Dell EFIBootMaker0.3.2. am exhausted now.please any body here to help me out.i'm frustrated

any would would greatly received..
thank you

[PeterAGASSI]

you know what hard drive has nothing connected with your computers memory,
they are separate and varies
you just concentrate on how your hard drive is partitioned... not everything will show in the drive available space, and according to the circumstances on how the drive is formatted,some times it depends on the operating system you are with,since it will not give you all the available space on the drive...

[Baltazar]

you need Customize the Mac OS X Installer

first of all need to modify one file on the drive,because the drive containing folder is hidden by default, use Terminal to access the folder,with your USB drive plugged in, open Terminal and type the following command
open /Volumes/OSXDVD/System/Installation/Packages
paste the file OSInstall.mpkg to the root of you hard drive.and type this command too cd /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"
xar -x -f ./OSInstall.mpkg
the two new files/folders appear on your hard drive. These files are called Resources and Distribution. open the distribution file in order to edit it
make like this
<options
hostArchitectures='ppc,i386'
allow-external-scripts='yes'
/>
Next, edit next part like this
<choice
id="MigrationAssistant"
start_visible="true"
start_selected="upgrade_allowed()"
>
<pkg-ref id="com.apple.pkg.MigrationAssistant"/>
</choice>
apply this changes,return to the Terminal window. put this command xar -c -f OSInstall.mpkg *
get the OSInstall.mpkg file from your hard drive back to the USB drive,replace the file and complete the process you can now remove the usb.now run the Modified Installer.

now you are able to partition a drive with the MBR option. if you are going to install another operating system(s) later and want to partition your drives using Disk Utility in preparation for those installs,MBR also has the advantage of reducing free space waste by eliminating the (rather useless) EFI partitions

[Sebastian.j]

I guess it is because of problem with the components that are installed by default.modification on the installer will do the purpose,even though i don't know how to do that.As with most guides,requires a copy of Mac OS X Leopard in order to function.you need to have already created a bootable USB Installer drive.if you have this enough you can Google for the method