My hard drive icon used to display the amount of free space beneath it on the desktop
Since I formatted when I choose "show item info" in the view options, it only puts the total space, not the free

Have you rebooted yet? I think it has to reallocate the space left.

it only puts the total space, not the free _____(space)?

I have both on my desktop. so no.

hey i can't get my usage to show even though i went into view and checked the appropriate items.

are you selecting your desktop when you do this yes? or otherwise making it a system wide change Derek?

I have not had any problems with this feature apart from the main desktop hard drive icon not changing its true free-space until after a reboot/logout I wish the finder would refresh icons and files like Explorer does on Windows' my only gripe with the Finder. Sigh...

ok where should i be going to set this up properly?

click on finder, show view options, than make sure show item info is checked. thats all

Click on your desktop (infact just select your disk drive from your desktop) once its highlighted hold CMD and hit J (CMD - apple Logo - clover leaf) then a box will appear with icon properties the box that says "Show Item Info" select that then close the box. All should now be set.

ooh ok i got it.. thanks.

rebooting brought back the free space, thanks guys

I've occasionally had this happen too, for no aparant reason. Sometimes rebooting helps, other times it doesn't. It has happened in Jaguar and Panther. Seems to be an intermittent bug.

Next time instead of rebooting, try restarting Finder. It works for me

It has to do with your permissions, at least on my eMac it does. If you try dropping a file on your HD does your cursor get a "stop" sign? If that's the case you have to repair your permissions with disk utility.

I got the same problem but only with standard users. Is this only possible if you are an admin?

Sometimes you can lose the "Free space" even with a reboot if your permissions get messed up sometimes.