Disk Space Wrong Vista 64 bit

[Guest]

Hello Has anyone experienced the disk space being reported wrong with Vista
64 bit


thanks
N

 

[Paul Smith]

Hello Has anyone experienced the disk space being reported wrong with
Vista 64 bit

How wrong do you mean by wrong? What size are you expecting and what size
is it reporting?

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Desktop Experience.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

 

[Neville]

Hello Paul

Well the drive is 500gb and if I go through the folders on it I'm about 80gb
missing, can't seem to find it anywhere...

Thanks

Neville

 

[Ian D]

Hello Paul

Well the drive is 500gb and if I go through the folders on it I'm about
80gb missing, can't seem to find it anywhere...

Thanks

Neville

One thing to try is turn off System Restore. It uses about 15% of
a drive's space, which would be a little less than 80GB for a 500GB
drive.

 

[Neville]

Ok I'll give it a try, are the system restore files just not reported in the
visable folders on the hard drive
thanks

 

[Steve Thackery]

Well the drive is 500gb and if I go through the folders on it I'm about

80gb missing, can't seem to find it anywhere...

One factor is the different way disk manufacturers and OS makers define a
gigabyte.

Disk manufacturers want their disks to seem as big as possible, so they
define a gigabyte as a thousand megabytes. Microsoft does it properly: a
gigabyte is 1024 megabytes.

I'm not sure, but I wonder if the disk manufacturers cheat at the next level
down, too (i.e. a megabyte being a thousand kilobytes, instead of 1024
kilobytes).

Anyway, even if this isn't the whole story, I suspect it is contributing.
The other factor will be the system restore files, which are effectively
"invisible".

SteveT

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hello Paul

Well the drive is 500gb and if I go through the folders on it I'm about 80gb
missing, can't seem to find it anywhere...

Almost certainly there are two issues there:

1. All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes,
while the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as
2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So the 500 billion byte
drive you have is actually around 450GB.

Some people point out that the official international standard defines
the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct though they
are, using the binary value of GB is so well established in the
computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a billion to
be deceptive marketing.

2. Some of your files are hidden, and if you aren't set to view hidden
files, you will miss those.

 

[Ian D]

Ok I'll give it a try, are the system restore files just not reported in
the visable folders on the hard drive
thanks

One thing I forgot, is to do a disk cleanup after turning off System
Restore. You can turn System Restore on again after seeing the
results. You will not see the expected 500GB because of the
difference between binary and decimal gigabytes, but it should
be closer.