"Wated disk space"?

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a desktop with 2 partitions. My C: partition (4 GB) is low on disk
space.
I have moved the page file to D: to free up disk space. It helped for some
time, but now i have low space again. I checked the sizes of different
directories on C: and found out the the size of the C:\Windows directory is
2.82GB size. However, when i enter the Windows directory and measure the
sizes of all sub-directories and files in it, i get that the total size is
only 1.17 GB. I am clueless why there is such a difference in the sizes. I
should also mentioned that i view the hidden directories, so size should
match in two cases.

Any ideas what can cause the difference sizes? It looks like that more 1.5GB
is "wasted" causes the low disk space problem...

Thanks,

Barak

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi,

I have a desktop with 2 partitions. My C: partition (4 GB) is low on disk
space.
I have moved the page file to D: to free up disk space. It helped for some
time, but now i have low space again. I checked the sizes of different
directories on C: and found out the the size of the C:\Windows directory is
2.82GB size. However, when i enter the Windows directory and measure the
sizes of all sub-directories and files in it, i get that the total size is
only 1.17 GB. I am clueless why there is such a difference in the sizes. I
should also mentioned that i view the hidden directories, so size should
match in two cases.

Any ideas what can cause the difference sizes? It looks like that more 1.5GB
is "wasted" causes the low disk space problem...

Thanks,

Barak

Nothing is wasted - there are several files & folders that are
required and that are hidden. 2.8 GBytes for a WinXP system
folder is entirely reasonable. Get a larger disk - if you don't
then this problem will keep on bugging you.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a desktop with 2 partitions. My C: partition (4 GB) is low on
disk space.
I have moved the page file to D: to free up disk space. It helped for
some time, but now i have low space again. I checked the sizes of
different directories on C: and found out the the size of the
C:\Windows directory is
2.82GB size. However, when i enter the Windows directory and measure
the sizes of all sub-directories and files in it, i get that the
total size is only 1.17 GB. I am clueless why there is such a
difference in the sizes. I should also mentioned that i view the
hidden directories, so size should match in two cases.

Any ideas what can cause the difference sizes? It looks like that
more 1.5GB is "wasted" causes the low disk space problem...

You are perhaps confusing "Size" with "Size on Disk."

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.

 

[Guest]

Pegasus, Ken,

I see all hidden files and directories and thre should not be any difference
between the 2 sizes (Ken - the numbers i gave are both from "File on disk"
data, so the difference is not from that).

In my other laptop i see the same sizes for entire Windows directory and
when i enter the directory and measure the sizes of all sub-directories and
files. The size of Windows directory there is 1.14 GB which look much more
reasonable.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Barak

 

[R. McCarty]

Do you also have the other 2 View options that can affect the
visible folders/files ?
- Hide extensions for known file types [[Unchecked]]
- Hide protected operating system files [[Unchecked]]