Folder Properties

  • Thread starter Thread starter \(Joseph
  • Start date Start date
J

\(Joseph

When I right click on a folder and select properties, it shows size of 23
meg and size on disk of 72 meg.

Can anyone tell me what the difference is.

Thank you
 
(Joseph said:
When I right click on a folder and select properties, it shows size of 23
meg and size on disk of 72 meg.

Can anyone tell me what the difference is.

Thank you
Click to expand...
It possibly has to do with the size of your clusters. Smaller clusters are
more efficient. If your cluster size is 16k, for example, and you have a lot
of files that are only 6k or 8k, each one will occupy an entire 16k cluster
and the rest of that space goes to waste. It doesn't seem like much, but if
you have a lot of small files like that it can add up bigtime.
 
Hi,

The former is the real size of the file, the latter is the amount of disk
space it occupies. Basically the parts of this file are scattered in
different clusters on the hard drive. This discrepancy is often due to
cluster size, particularly if you are using FAT32 on a large drive. It
could also be due in part to a large amount of fragmentation of the drive or
just the file. All data bits, regardless of actual size, occupy at least one
cluster. In NTFS you normally would use 4K clusters, but in FAT32 you can
use anywhere from 4K to 32K depending on the volume size. If a file is 1K in
size, it's space on the drive would still be at least 4K in either file
system. If you are using 32K clusters in FAT32, the 1K file would occupy 32K
of disk space (how's that for a discrepancy?). Basically, your 23MB file is
broken into many parts, each occupying one full cluster. It is the total
cluster size that the system is reporting as the disk space occupied.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
(Joseph said:
When I right click on a folder and select properties, it shows size
of 23 meg and size on disk of 72 meg.

Can anyone tell me what the difference is.
Click to expand...



Space is allocated on disk drives in units called clusters. The size of the
cluster varies with the file system, and sometimes with the size of the
partition.

If you're using NTFS, your cluster size is probably 4K. That means that
every file between 1 byte and 4096 bytes (size) uses one cluster, 4096 bytes
(size on disk). Every file between 4097 bytes and 8192 bytes uses two
clusters, 8192 bytes, and so on.

The difference between the size and the size on disk is called "cluster
overhang" or "slack," and that's what accounts for the difference in the two
numbers you see.
 
(Joseph said:
When I right click on a folder and select properties, it shows size of 23
meg and size on disk of 72 meg.
Click to expand...

Dont know all the details. But, lets say you are in FAT32 on a large
hard drive.

A 2 byte file may take 32K of space.
 
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