HD displays wrong amount of free space..?

If the overall capacity is right, don't worry about it.

You have sector translation usage on a lot of files that aren't using all of its' last 4k sector, so your "actual" file size usage will be smaller than the "sectors taken" usage.

Also the pagefile might be resizing itself.

Yes, check the size as well as size on disk usage.

Er I don't exactly understand the terminology that the 2nd poster used, but I think you guys might have missed what I was asking. I apologize if you guys did get my question.

What I'm curious about is that it says I'm using 34.9 GB of the 52 GB's available, according to the local disk (C  properties. However when I actually go into the C: drive and highlight everything (including hidden files) and check the size, the number comes up to be 27.9 GB. There's a difference of 7 GB.

I understand that the computer computes the harddrive size in binary, which (along with some other factors) is why my advertised 60GB harddrive actually has only 52GB of space. But my question is why the C: drive properties says I'm using 34.9GB when I'm actually using 27.9 (calculated by highlighting every folder in the C rive and checking the file size).

There's a 7GB discrepency.

Why are you highlighting all the folders? Just highlight the C drive, right-click, and properties.

You probably aren't seeing all the system files not to mention the million and one restore points windows creates. When's the last time you ran disk cleanup and told it to delete all but the last restore point?

What they mean is when you highlight everything and right-click and go Properties, there is a Size: field and a Size on Disk: field.
Which one are you reading?

Windows cuts up your hard drive into little chunks. These chunks can be 4KB, 8KB, 16KB, 32KB, etc. I think typically its 32KB.
Now, you only have a text file that holds a registration key. Its only 20 characters long, right? So its 20 bytes on disk, but your hard drive can't write that little amount of data, so it fills up the chunk. So your data is really only 20 bytes, but on disk, its taking 32KB.

It could also be hidden folders.

Read before you post. :roll:

The default NTFS cluster size is 4KB but you are correct in regards to the rest. The size of my files (the size field) is 24.8GB but my actual disk usage is only 24.6GB (when I select all files and choose properties). I use 16KB so that's why it's actually smaller.

But it does say only 25.1GB in the drive properties. Who knows. :roll:

I did read.. Short term memory kicked in.

Ok, so just an opinion here...

System Restore uses a default percentage of space (usually 12%) on the HD for your Restore points. Taking into account that you can only use 52.8GB of your 60GB HD, you can multiply that by 12% which gives a usage of about 6.3GB.

Adding actual Used Space of all selected folders i.e. 28.5GB with the System Restore value of 6.3GB will give you 34.8GB. The remaining, missing, +- 700MB is probably the Swap File.

There you have the black hole that your HD space went into...

So to get rid of the system restore points I use disc cleaner? Cuz seriously with only 60GB of total space, 7 gigabytes is a lot.

remember

$marketing_GB=1000^3=1000*1000*1000=1000000000 bytes

$REAL_GB=GiB=1024*3=1024*1024*1024=1073741824 bytes


The filesystem itself takes up some space and there's internal and external fragmentation.

On top of that windoze takes up space for system restore + swap + IE cache + temp directories + other stuff

So don't take the numbers your OS gives you too seriously.

If you want to know the actual numbers use Knoppix.


I think you can right click on C: select properties and click disk cleanup

Simply getting rid of the restore points won't help all that much. You are going to have to turn off System Restore monitoring your HD in System Properties.

I make it a point of doing that 1st thing after fresh installing my rig...

Hope this helps.

I wouldn't necessarily turn off the restore points. Just run disk cleanup. On the advanced tab there is an option to delete all but the last restore point. Then go into the the system restore settings and crank it down to 1% or less.

disable system restore. it holds viruses sometimes anyway.

Better yet switch to Linux  

So I ran disk cleanup and... by god. It frees up 7 gigabytes.

I love you guys. Thank you so muchh!!!

That must have taken about three hours 8O

uhm, while you're at it, google:

CrapCleaner
NT RegOpt
AdAware
SpyBot

install, update & run those programs often and you'll enjoy a much cleaner machine. I don't have a virus scanner installed since they're mostly nothing but giant resource hogs and i never have problems with viruses. After every web surf session I run CrapCleaner - it gets some temp files Disk Cleaner misses.

and defragment often.

You would not believe the amount of trash windoze keeps around.... in this case 7GB worth.

I forgot to mention that "if I remember correctly" sometimes it saves files that you tried to drag and drop onto a CD or DVD too.

Windoze is a pack rat.

Glad it's resolved