Hotfixes size in add/remove

[Kurt]

I backed-up my entire hard drive, and removed all
documents, saved articles, old programs, etc. And did not
gain any disc space. I don't know why.

I looked in my add/remove programs, and saw that I have 30
or so "Hotfixes," both for SP1, and SP2, and their all
different Q#'s, but my question is: all of their sizes
(all 31) are exactly the same @ 22.94 MB but when I check
with Microsoft web site the downloads average 5000-10,000
KB. Does this make any sense to anyone?
I gained nothing it seems, is there something wrong? Why
are they all (Hotfixes) the same size?

 

[Rory]

This is the space allocated to them. The disk space is organized like a
bunch of shoeboxes, one file (or part of a file) per shoebox, and the rest
of the space is, unfortunately, wasted. As you know, you really need to keep
those files. Have you considered a new, inexpensive hard drive?

 

[Darnell]

Still, somethng must be up, as it was my understanding
that FAT32 had clusters of only 4k.
MVP's??

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Still, somethng must be up, as it was my understanding
that FAT32 had clusters of only 4k.

No, FAT32 clusters vary with the size of the partition as
follows:

257MB - 8GB 4KB
8 - 16GB 8KB
16 - 32GB 16KB
32GB - 2TB 32KB

 

[Alex Nichol]

I backed-up my entire hard drive, and removed all
documents, saved articles, old programs, etc. And did not
gain any disc space. I don't know why.

Depends on how you did the remove. Deleting files may have simply moved
them - do you by any chance run Norton Protected Recycle Bin? If so, as
far as XP is concerned they are still around.

I looked in my add/remove programs, and saw that I have 30
or so "Hotfixes," both for SP1, and SP2, and their all
different Q#'s, but my question is: all of their sizes
(all 31) are exactly the same @ 22.94 MB but when I check
with Microsoft web site the downloads average 5000-10,000
KB. Does this make any sense to anyone?
I gained nothing it seems, is there something wrong? Why
are they all (Hotfixes) the same size?

Any size shown against Hotfixes is essentially spurious (on my system
the column is blank).

To remove the entries - if you are sure you will not want to uninstall
the fixes - go to C:\ Windows and delete the corresponding
$NTUninstallnnnnnn$ folders, which contain the files needed to
uninstall. If you then try the remove it will fail, and you will be
offered the chance to remove from the list

 

[cquirke]

This is the space allocated to them. The disk space is
organized like a bunch of shoeboxes, one file (or part
of a file) per shoebox, and the rest of the space is,
unfortunately, wasted.

That description fits with cluster slack space, but I don't
think that is what Kurt is asking about... unless there's
some other mechanism specific to this situation (other than
cluster slack space) that relates to how Hotfixes are stored?

Good question, if you cleared the recycle bin after deleting
your data and so on. Disk space on C: is dynamic, in that the
OS consumes it itself; for example, the program files you deleted
would likely have been monitored by System Restore and thus kept
within SR's backup data storage even if not in recycle bin.

That doesn't explain why your deleted data didn't free up space,
as data files are not monitored by SR (if they were, a SR Restore
would revert your data files; disaster!).

Temp and swap (page file) size adjustments also bounce C: space
around, so maybe that masks the effect?

No, it doesn't really - 22.94M is waaay over any possible
size for a single cluster, so even if the size description
was referring to space occupied rather than file size, it
would still not explain this. Perhaps the uninstallation
will remove all the fixes as a unit?

It's a good question, that

 

[cquirke]

Still, somethng must be up, as it was my understanding
that FAT32 had clusters of only 4k.
MVP's??

I'm not an MVP, but I can answer that.

There are three different File Allocation Table file
systems; FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 - as the names suggest,
each uses 12, 16 and 32 bits to hold cluster addresses.

FAT12 and FAT16 are limited to small maximum numbers of
clusters they can address, so they use larger clusters
to stretch this addressability to handle larger volumes.

FAT12 is used only on tiny volumes, such as diskettes.

FAT16 cluster size varies with volume size as follows:

4k 128M - 255M
8k 256M - 511M
16k 512M - 1023M
32k 1024M - 2047M
64k 2048M - 4095M (NT only)

FAT32 can address far more clusters, so it doesn't need
to roll up the cluster size, but does anyway, as follows:

4k 512M - < 8G
8k 8G - < 32G
16k 32G - ??
32k ??G - ??

This is not inappropriate, because even if 32-bit addresses
allow an 80G to be addressed as 4k clusters, this would make
for a large, slow and fragile pair of FAT.