Harddrive used memory

[Guest]

H

I have a 120 gig external hard drive which is of course displayed as 111 GB in Windows I don't know why but I know that is normal. Now the problem

When I check the properties of my drive it says that 99 GB are used
But when I click properties of all my folders including recycled, system volume information and _restore it tells me all those folders are 62 GB

Why is that what can I do about it

Thanks

 

[Adam Turner]

You're not viewing the contents of the hidden files on the drive. That will compensate for the difference.

My Computer >> Tools >> Folder Options >> View Tab >> Show Hidden Files and folders.
Hi

I have a 120 gig external hard drive which is of course displayed as 111 GB in Windows I don't know why but I know that is normal. Now the problem.

When I check the properties of my drive it says that 99 GB are used.
But when I click properties of all my folders including recycled, system volume information and _restore it tells me all those folders are 62 GB.

Why is that what can I do about it?

Thanks

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I have a 120 gig external hard drive which is of course displayed as
111 GB in Windows I don't know why but I know that is normal.

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 a 120 billion
bye drive is actually a little under 112GB.

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.

Now the
problem.

When I check the properties of my drive it says that 99 GB are used.
But when I click properties of all my folders including recycled,
system volume information and _restore it tells me all those folders
are 62 GB.

Why is that what can I do about it?

Not set to view hidden files?

 

[Guest]

I wish it would be that simple to solve
I am viewing all the hidden files and system protected files.
But still 30 GB seem to be missing
The problem seems to lie more deeply

But thanks anyway for the idea

 

[Guest]

Recycle Bin, temporary internet files, and system restore all reserve decent size chunks of your drive for storage of their files. Set Recycle bin and temp internet file
to zero and reboot to see if that makes up any missing space. You can then restore the settings to default, or a smaller amount, if desired
Coach Ed

 

[Tim Slattery]

Hi

I have a 120 gig external hard drive which is of course displayed
as 111 GB in Windows I don't know why but I know that is normal.
Now the problem.

That's simply the difference between decimal gigabytes (10**9 bytes =
1,000,000,000 bytes) and binary gigabytes (2**30 bytes=1,073,741,824
bytes). Manufacturers quote disk sizes in decimal GB, the software
uses binary GB. 120 (decimal) GB = 111.76 (binary) gigabytes.

When I check the properties of my drive it says that 99 GB are used.
But when I click properties of all my folders including recycled,
system volume information and _restore it tells me all those folders are 62 GB.

Ever heard of slack space? Disk space is allocated in units called
"clusters" or "allocation units". The size of those units is
determined by the file system you're using (FAT32 tends to use bigger
units than NTFS), and by the size of the partition. If you have a
single FAT32 partition covering that entire disk, then the cluster
size would be 32,000 bytes (or maybe 64,000 bytes).

Any file, no matter how small, will occupy at least one cluster. All
files end up wasting some space in their last cluster. The missing
37GB are probably being lost to slack space. (Some goes to control
structures: directories, mapping tables, things that the File System
uses to keep track of what's where.)