windows - size of the disk is more than the size of the files on the disk

windows windows-7 disk-space

07
2014-07

Questioner

I am using windows 7. my c: drive capacity is 75 gb. where the Os is located. The size of the files on the disk is only 50 gb including hidden files. But used space of c drive shows 60Gb. Where the 10gb space goes? I think it might be due to the files that are burned to a dvd disk long time before. every time burn a files to a dvd. size of C: drive gets increased. how to resolve the problem? how to get back my disk space?

Answers

David Marshall

The size calculated by adding up file sizes in Windows Explorer is known to be inaccurate. The only correct usage figure is in the 'pie' chart. There are a number of Microsoft articles which explain some of the places the space can be.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2013/03/01/where-did-my-space-go.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2008/07/03/ntfs-misreports-free-space.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2008/10/31/ntfs-misreporting-free-space-part-2.aspx

You can also use programs like Treesize and WinDirStat to investigate.

Tarquin

All drives are formatted, and as such lose a portion of their total capacity. For example a 2TB Hard Drive only has 1.81GB Usable space after it is formatted.

This is because the partition table takes up the part of the drive you cannot see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

^ Hope this helps a bit more.

cybernard

First listen to the other people who have already stated the different between a gigabyte and a billion bytes. A 75gb hard drive really stores about 69.8gb of stuff.

Second, when you store a file it uses a minimum of 1 cluster, and has to use whole number of clusters. You can not allocated 2.5 cluster, it is really 3 clusters.

Here is a functional example. Lets say your cluster is 4k (or 4096 bytes) if you save a document on your hard drive that is 1,000 bytes then 3096 bytes of space are wasted. The end of every single file on the hard drive generates some amount of waste. The only except are files that are exactly sized in increments of 4k. So 4096 multiplied by any whole number.

If you have collection of 1,000 icons using 1000 bytes on a 4k cluster then each one wastes 3096 bytes. Roughly 3k. 3k *1000 = approx 3 megabytes of wasted space.

Every file system has this basic issue. You can adjust the cluster size on some file systems with in certain limits. FAT is the least flexible. FAT32 is slightly flexible. NTFS has the most flexibility of all the windows file systems. It is possible with NTFS to have a cluster size of 512 bytes, and this reduces the waste to less than 1% but some waste still exists.

To clear up the fragmentation non-sense. Fragmentation, just makes it harder for the operating system to find the entire file slowing down access to the file. It can not increase or decrease the amount of available space.

However, it is possible that the software you are using creates the DVD in a temporary file and then burns the file. After the file is burnt it likely deletes the file and you get some hard drive space back. DVD can be as large as 4.6gb or 8.5gb if it is dual layer. A deletion of a temporary file of this size would make a big impact on free space on a hard drive of this size.

Related Answers

Tom Wijsman

You might want to completely wipe and test the disk with special tools from the brand of the hard disk, that will ensure that you will see the right information. If that doesn't help, the hard drive either has a wrong sticker or is providing the wrong information.

Josip Medved

I would assume that this is because partition table was copied from old drive also. There should be option during restore which will allow disk to expand. Since I do not have Acronis near me, I cannot say exact name of that option.

Additionally, you can try Extend Volume option in Disk Management (Vista and above) or something like Partition Magic.

pavsaund

Have you tried updating the BIOS for the motheroard? It's a pretty common problem with old BIOS versions, that larger drives aren't recognized correctly.

Col

You might find that a tool like the gparted live cd will let you resize your partition to fill the disk. Alternatively your imaging software might have an option for resizing the partition during the restore.

Joakim Elofsson

i doubt it is the BIOS, since the drive has been recognized before.

if you still have the original drive, the run Active@Killdisk or DBAN over the new drive and delete anything that's on it, then check the drive again.

i'm not using Acronis (no match for Symantec Ghost Enterprise, sry :) but i suppose you didn't set the destination drive parameters correctly when cloning the drive.

Loren Pechtel

We had the same problem with a Dell 6400 with Media Direct. It was a problem with HPA (host protected area) on the harddrive. In this case, it was the Media Direct hidden partition in the HPA that we cloned over to the new bigger hard drive. What a night mare. We were able to get rid of the HPA and then set the drive to the full size and copy over only the partitions we wanted. See these sites for info and tools. We used HDAT2 tool.

Search wikipedia for Host Protected Area (good info and tools)http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm

RateControl

In the Acronis software, you will have to play with the partition sizes. You must boot from the Acronis CD and before you lay down the image, you should be able to use up all 320GB ( I forget which step this is). I ran into this problem a few months back. Acronis isn't smart enough to realize that it is placing the image on a larger harddrive, you have to tell it.

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windows - size of the disk is more than the size of the files on the disk