Used Drive Space Discrepancy

C

churin

Used drive space as shown by Property of a drive does not match that of
all folders in the drive and files at root of the drive: Property of my
C: drive says the used drive space is 10GB but the individual folder
sizes and the files (hibernate, pagefile, etc) at the root all summed up
is 7.5GB. I wonder why is this discrepancy. Can anyone help?

Kaz
 
D

dutchgoldtony

Do you have an OEM pc that didn't come with a XP reinstall disk? Mine
did and it's instead on a seperate partition. Don't have a notion how
to use it though!!!

Might be it...

Tony
www.tohalloran.co.nr
 
M

Marko Jotic

he said the properties of a file or folder, not the drive itself
Thanks for your response.



How to get "Size on disk"? Isn't it by looking Property of the drive? If
so, then that is what I am doing. Please review my original post.


Yes.

Kaz

--
Marko Jotic
"Common sense is anything but common".
From the notebooks of Lazarus Long. Robert A. Heinlein.
Handmade knives, antique designs, exotic materials at
http://www.knifeforging.com/
 
C

churin

Isn't he suggesting that I compare two things one of which being the
size of drive?

Kaz
 
M

Marko Jotic

churin said:
Isn't he suggesting that I compare two things one of which being the
size of drive?
No, his explanation was right: each file has slack, not the disk, he was
telling you how to see it on one file.

you asked "How to get "Size on disk"", he was talking about any given
file and you get that from file properties


try this:

look at the properties of the drive and take note of the used space.

then in the file list do Ctrl-A, right click>properties, you will see it
adding up everything (This I think is what you want to see)

--
Marko Jotic
"Common sense is anything but common".
From the notebooks of Lazarus Long. Robert A. Heinlein.
Handmade knives, antique designs, exotic materials at
http://www.knifeforging.com/
 
C

churin

Let me add a related question:

The property of a drive itself lists two different values one of which
is in bytes and another in GB.
The property of a folder or a file lists the sizes in two groups one
being Size and another being Size on Disk. Two different values for each
group are also shown in MB and in bytes.

What do these many different size values means?

Kaz
 
W

Wesley Vogel

You have to make sure that you're looking at Size on disk not Size, there is
a big difference between the two.

Size is the actual size of file's (or folder's) data.

Size on disk is the actual space that the file (or folder) takes up on the
hard drive.

If you are going to add up sizes to compare them, you have to add up the
proper sizes.

If you are adding up Size, you're wasting your time. You need to look at
Size on disk.

How to locate and correct disk space problems on NTFS volumes in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315688

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
P

Plato

churin said:
Used drive space as shown by Property of a drive does not match that of
all folders in the drive and files at root of the drive: Property of my
C: drive says the used drive space is 10GB but the individual folder
sizes and the files (hibernate, pagefile, etc) at the root all summed up
is 7.5GB. I wonder why is this discrepancy. Can anyone help?

Different programs report free hard drive space in different ways.
Nothing to be concerned about.
 
W

Wesley Vogel

See this.

Binary vs. Decimal Measurements
http://www.pcguide.com/intro/fun/bindec.htm
The property of a folder or a file lists the sizes in two groups one
being Size and another being Size on Disk. Two different values for each
group are also shown in MB and in bytes.

Size is the actual size of file's (or folder's) data.

Size on disk is the actual space that the file (or folder) takes up on the
hard drive.

KB (kilobyte) is a binary number, 2 to the tenth power, 2^10
or 1,024 bytes. So 1KB is 1,024 bytes, not 1000 bytes like we would
normally think of using decimal numbers

MB (Megabyte) is 10^9 or 10 to the ninth power. 1,000,000 decimal bytes or
1,048,576 bytes.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
C

churin

What I am concerned about is how much disk space a given file of a group
of folders is occupying.

Marko said:
try this:

look at the properties of the drive and take note of the used space.

There are two values shown. Which one indicates the disk space occupied?
then in the file list do Ctrl-A, right click>properties, you will see it
adding up everything (This I think is what you want to see)

There are four different values shown. Which one is indicative of the
total disk space used by those files?

Kaz
 
C

churin

There are two different values shown for Size on Disk. Which one shows
the size of the disk space taken?

Kaz
 
M

Marko Jotic

do what I said for that group: TRY, stop asking, TRY what I said
What I am concerned about is how much disk space a given file of a group
of folders is occupying.



There are two values shown. Which one indicates the disk space occupied?

There are four different values shown. Which one is indicative of the
total disk space used by those files?

Kaz

--
Marko Jotic
"Common sense is anything but common".
From the notebooks of Lazarus Long. Robert A. Heinlein.
Handmade knives, antique designs, exotic materials at
http://www.knifeforging.com/
 
W

Wesley Vogel

The value in parentheses. 736 KB (753,664 bytes)

Multiply each value that is reported in kilobytes (KB) by 1024 to determine
the accurate byte size.

736 X 1024 = 753,664

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
C

churin

I think I now know what figures to look. Then take C: drive of my PC for
example, the "Used space" of the drive is indicated to be 6.49GB, and
the property of of all files in C: drive shows "Size on disk" of 5.93GB.
Is the difference between these values the file slack?

Kaz
 
H

HeyBub

churin said:
What I am concerned about is how much disk space a given file of a
group of folders is occupying.



There are two values shown. Which one indicates the disk space
occupied?

There are four different values shown. Which one is indicative of the
total disk space used by those files?

The largest.
 
H

HeyBub

churin said:
Used drive space as shown by Property of a drive does not match that
of all folders in the drive and files at root of the drive: Property
of my C: drive says the used drive space is 10GB but the individual
folder sizes and the files (hibernate, pagefile, etc) at the root all
summed up is 7.5GB. I wonder why is this discrepancy. Can anyone
help?

It's Irish math.

The box is always bigger than the contents.

Creat an itty-bitty file with Notepad. Look at the file size. If you typed
"ABC" in Notepad, you'll see that the file now occupies 512, 4096, or
something else bytes on the drive.

Then there's overhead not directly attributed to an individual file, such as
directories.
 

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