I have an external hard drive that I use for storing data. Recently, I noticed that the combined size of all files on the drive (even including hidden files) is about 300GB less than what Windows reports when I check the drive's properties. Can anyone explain what could be causing this discrepancy? I attached images for reference: on the left is the properties of the drive, and on the right, you can see the size of the files on the drive.
1 Answer
The difference you’re seeing usually comes down to how file systems allocate space. Most file systems use a minimum block size, often 4KB. This means that even if a file is just 1 byte, it still takes up 4KB on the hard drive. So, if you have a lot of small files, the space used can add up quickly due to this rounding effect.
I noticed something similar! When I copied all my files to a new SSD, the space used was much closer to what I expected. The SSD handled the file sizes differently, showing virtually the same numbers whether checking the drive or the files themselves. It makes me wonder why this rounding effect hits hard drives differently than SSDs.