I've noticed a big discrepancy when I check the properties of my user folder. The actual size shows as 730GB, while the size on disk only shows 220GB. How is that even possible? Can someone explain what's happening here and why the size on disk measurement is important?
4 Answers
Honestly, sounds like you might just have a lot of hidden files or backups. Make sure to check your partitions because sometimes they can take up space without you realizing it. You can visualize your partitions by going to Disk Management. If you have a lot of unallocated space, tools like Rescuzilla could help you adjust things.
That's quite a massive discrepancy! But hey, maybe you're just storing a lot of "entertainment" files, right? 😂
Your issue could also stem from NTFS compression or sparse files. Both of these features can significantly reduce the amount of space files occupy on disk while keeping the actual size intact.
This situation might be because you have OneDrive Folder Backup activated with Files on Demand turned on. If you have cloud-only files in your OneDrive, they will appear in File Explorer but won't take up space on your device. Just keep in mind that the free OneDrive storage is limited to 5GB, so to have more space, you’d need a Microsoft 365 subscription, which gives you 1TB of storage.
Totally agree with this! It could also be that you have compression enabled, which minimizes the file sizes on your disk. If you move those files to a non-compressed disk, they'll take up more space.