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XP disc space reporting wrong

esquier

I`ve two pcs running XP and in both cases Drive C. properties show more used space than the total of the files contained. In one, used space is 9gig but only 6gig of space. I don`t use norton utilities which apparently can cause this, I also cleared System restore and no hidden files so what can cause this discrepancy. I know theres`a difference between 1Gig and 1000,000 bytes but not this much. I hope someone can enlighten me. Thanks

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esquier

Correction, 6Gigs of files!

sceptre

Used space is always going to be larger than the totals of the files combined. How much depends on how many files, their size and sector size (each file gets a number of sectors, each file can occupy many sectors (and almost always does) but you can't have two files using the same sector). I can do a bad analogy with soft drinks and cartons if you don't quite understand me.

I can see 6 GB of files listed and 6GB of space. How big is your hard drive?

esquier

Thanks for replying, here are the full details:-

40Gig split into two partitions. They come out as

C = 39.1gs.....11.6 used - 27.4 free, files amount to 8.7 Gs.

D = 35.4gs.....20.9 used - 14.4 free, files

19.5 gs,

As you can see, the difference is much greater in C, I`ve since
installed Partition Magic and it gives similar readings. So it seems in
total 4.3 Gigs have gone astray. I did a clean install in C recently with a
quick format whether that makes any difference, both partitions are NTFS.
Any ideas?.

sceptre

That's a rather substantial difference all right. Might be explainable though.

I checked my C drive for comparison. Right-clicking the drive gives me 8.57GB used, selecting all files on C gives me 8.19GB of files with hidden files and folders remaining hidden and protected operating sytem files hidden (Tools - Options - View). De-selecting this option gives me a result of 7.81GB.

Try de-selecting that option and see what result you get then. You still have some hidden files etc even if you didn't create any - there's the pagefile for one (mine is 384MB, yours is probably bigger if you've more than 256MB RAM). If the result gets about a gig closer on C it's almost certainly because of what I mentioned in the post above - if you're using the default sector size for NT/2000/XP of 4096 bytes, all those tiny smaller files will add up.

(there's nothing wrong with using that as the default sector size by the way, I've mine set to 4096 although some would go for 512)

esquier

Hi, Sceptre, it does`nt look good for me, the " view hidden files" option is on and the page file is set to 768-1536 tho`I have it set to clear at shutdown so my options look to be receding. Thanks for your help

Squall

You might also wanna have a look at the recycle bin. Usually itll reserve a certain percentage of the drive for itself. The default I tihnk is 10%. On a 30gig partition thatd be 3gigs.

esquier

That`s interesting, however I`ve been checking it out a little further, I d/loaded a little app called Disctective and it seems to show that XP is under reporting everything ie. seperate folders in C are shown smaller by XP.Also the free space seems to be 2G under, maybe thats the recycle bin as it`s approx. 10%. Apart from that the biggest discrepancy was in some Mpegs recorded off the tv tuner, XP says 6.2G whereas the app says 7.9, All the figures tally in the app. The mind boggles.