mysterious discrepancy in the reported free space on two ?identical ?usb drives
in [Storage]
|
Prev: mysterious discrepancy in the reported free space on two identical ?usb drives
Next: mysterious discrepancy in the reported free space on two identicalusb drives
From: Arno on 17 Feb 2010 21:45 sobriquet <dohduhdah(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On 18 feb, 01:08, Arno <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote: >> sobriquet <dohduh...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> >http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/2852/passportdiscrepancy.jpg >> > I have two identical WD 1tb passport usb drives filled with identical >> > data. >> > When I select all files (including hidden and system files) and >> > display its properties, the listed filesizes match up between the two >> > drives. But when I go to 'my computer' and display the properties of >> > each of the two passport drives, they differ in the size of the data >> > stored on the disk. Can anyone explain this discrepancy in the >> > reported data/free space between the two identical usb drives with >> > identical data? >> > The recycle bin is empty on both drives. >> > Kind regards and thanks in advance for any suggestions, Niek >> >> One thing is that directories grow when more files are put in them >> but they do not automatically shrink. Then there is the possibility >> that both drives have different filesystem parameters, e.g one can >> have ? a larger cluster size, which results in more wasted space >> at the end of the files for files that do not exactly end >> on a cluster boundary. >> >> Other possibilities exist, What are the concrete numbers you >> are seeing. > You can see the numbers in the screenshot at the top of my posting. As > far as I know, both drives have been formatted in an identical way > (NTFS is the default filesystem). The discrepancy seen is well within potential differences in directory (or other metadata) size. Don't worry about it. Worry if you see differences in the combined file size. As you can, see the metadata is about 156MB. It size is not as well-defined as the file size and may even depend on the order the files were put on disk. The difference of 29kB is pretty small. Arno -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans |