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Question

Used disc space is bigger then size of all files. Why?

Mar 13, 2012 9:46PM PDT

Hello,
I've found a problem with disc space on my disc C. Space used on this disc is 10GB bigger then size of all files on it.
Here are shown properties of mentioned cases.
I've tried to defragment disc, but the results was very poor.
Does anyone know what is the reason of this situation?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: space
Mar 13, 2012 10:05PM PDT

I recognize the picture on the right. That's from the properties of the c:-drive as told by Windows Explorer.
But what program made the picture on the left, and what does the PHP in the title bar mean?

To see which of the two is right, compare with the output from chkdsk on that drive. That should be equal to what Windows Explorer reports (but I can't check that at the moment, because it reports errors, so I'll have to run at boot to correct those).
That would mean that the program that made the picture on the left didn't include all files. That can happen with programs.

Kees

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Answer
You can't really get a ...
Mar 14, 2012 12:34PM PDT

comparison because of how a file is written to the disk.

During the formatting of a disk the disk is broken up into SECTORS based on the geometry of the drive and the size of each sector by default depends on the physical size of the drive itself. This determines how much drive space is used to store a file. This link breaks it down in detail for you - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314878

Now you have a drive larger than 2 GB so by default unless YOU or whoever formatted the drive selected a smaller allocation size than the default 4096 bytes (4 KB) that means that each file will use AT LEAST 4 KB even if it is actually only 256 bytes. a file that is 4098 bytes is 2 bytes larger than a file allocation unit so it will require two file allocation units which means that it will take up 8196 Bytes (8 KB) which as you can see is consuming much more disk space than the actual file size accounts for.

Hope this helps you understand that there is really nothing wrong with what you are seeing - one is showing actual file sizes while the other is showing how much disk space is needed for actually storing them.

The best way to minimize slack on your drives it to override the default and specify a 512 byte allocation size when formatting a disk. This assumes a lot of small files. If most of your files are larger a larger allocation size will be faster.

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Hi Edward ...
Mar 14, 2012 8:06PM PDT

10 GB difference on 20 GB of content is exceptional, even allowing some overhead for the filesystem itself (FAT, directories and such). So it was a good question, I think. It's a pity the OP didn't tell his findings.

Chkdsk will show all bytes used for whatever purposes.

Kees

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Actually kees ...
Mar 17, 2012 3:57PM PDT

if he formatted with the default 4096 Bytes (4 KB) size and his files only average 3072 Bytes (3 KB) in size the slack would eat up one fourth of his space leaving the full disk filled up although 1/4th of the space had nothing actually written to it. This doesn't even take into account the page file nor the MFT (it is NTFS so it has no FAT)

CHKDSK will show the ALLOCATION UNITS and their size and total on disk as well as total available BUT it will not show the slack because a 512 Byte file will still require a full 4096 Byte allocation unit in which to store the tiny file. (Actually if there are only a few such tiny files the entire file can be stored within the MFT but to keep things simple we won't go into that.)

As you mentioned though it is a shame he didn't expound on things as things like hidden and super hidden files can also enter the picture.