Alex said:
Hi All,
OS is XP Pro x64, fully patched up.
I've just swapped out my secondary hard drive, a 320GB, for a brand
new 1.5TB disc. My old disc was nearly full, roughly 10GB free - so
310GB of data. It was just a data disc and I simply copied all files
from the old 320GB to the new 1.5TB (which took a couple of hours).
Then I noticed something very odd...
The new drive is reporting that 658GB of space has been *used*. No
compression was or is in use on any of my hard drives. I've
defragged it and it still reports the same value. I cannot
physically have copied more than 320GB of data onto this new disc,
so...
How has my data suddenly doubled in size?
Thanks,
Alex Clark
1. 1.5 TB will not give you 1.5 TB of space, as with any drive. So
there is a bunch lost there. the 1.5 TB disks are often actually two
750 Gig disks these days and the lost space will be even higher than if
it were a 1.5 TB single disk inside.
e.g. my Seagate 1 TB drive has 981 Gig available. The preinstalled
software took up another ten or so Gigs, forget just how much. So first
you need to figure out those numbers. Usually Properties will give it
to you.
2. Did pre-installed software come onthe drive? Often it does
nowadays. On mine that was anothe ten gig, but I don't use it, so I
deleted it right away and don't use the mfg supplied toys, preferring my
own.
3. Don't forget the differences in reporting space: be sure to use the
SAME program or a "K" could be either 1,000 or 1,024 bytes. Over Gigs,
that difference gets huge in a hurry.
4. Are you sure XP didn't identify many of the files as "old" due to
non-use, and automagically copressed them for you? They won't be
compresed on the new drive.
Unless you turned it off, you can tell XP compressed files by their
blue color in Explorer. IF you haven't turned that fature off.
5. Sounds like sector sizes are the same. Are they both the same File
System? e.g. both FAT or both NTFS? That can create a difference.
Many drives come preformatted for FAT rather than NTFS for compatability
with the widest range of computer systems. Dumb, IMO; they should come
as NTFS, or let me format them period.
There is probably more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.
The figures you give do sound "funny" and worth figuring out why the
difference, but if the drive is working there is very likely a
reasonable explanation.
Try a test: Send an uncompressed, certain sized file to the hard drive.
Does its file size on the external match that on the internal? Compare
a few more files on the external to the size of the files on the
internal, and see if they are indicating the right size.
Don't sweat small differences because how they hit the sectors can
cause that (e.g. 1 byte needs a full sector (4096), most of the time.
So up to say 8k should be OK, but not of the magnitude you have.
When you come back, give more specs than you did this time.
Hope you'll let us know what you work out,
Twayne