Is Windows Bad At Math?

[head_crap]

It says I'm taking up the entire drive but I'm also only using half the drive?

[WhitetailAni]

Magic.

[AbydosOne]

6 minutes ago, head_crap said:

It says I'm taking up the entire drive but I'm also only using half the drive?

Turn out hidden items and check again.

 

Empty your Recycle Bin.

[C2dan88]

You have selected multiple drives/items rather than just right clicking the C drive? Because that is not the usual property dialog box when you right click a drive and select properties.

 

Also use windirstat to visualise whats taking all your drive space.

[mariushm]

You have a huge amount of files and folders.

 

It also depends on whether you have folders that have ntfs compression enabled or not - that can reduce the size of files down to around 50%, if the files are compressible.

 

Also, NTFS keeps file information in a reserved area, they keep there the file name, creation time, modification time, last access time, and other metadata.  If the file is very small, like let's say 100-200 bytes, NTFS also stores this data in the reserved area, instead of reserving the minimum of 512 bytes or 4096 bytes or whatever the sector size is configured at.

 

So, for example, if you have 50 000 files all less than 100-200 bytes (let's say average 150 bytes),  you may have 50 000  x 150 = ~ 7.5 MB that don't show up anywhere because they're stored in that reserved area for file records and metadata.

 

[head_crap]

9 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

You have selected multiple drives/items rather than just right clicking the C drive? Because that is not the usual property dialog box when you right click a drive and select properties.

 

Also use windirstat to visualise whats taking all your drive space.

I selected all the files in the C  drive and clicked on properties

[C2dan88]

No, just right click the drive from my computer.

Selecting all files is not selecting all files, there are hidden system files windows does not show,  even if show hidden/system files in explorer properties is checked.

[head_crap]

20 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Turn out hidden items and check again.

 

Empty your Recycle Bin.

Done and done. it didn't change much at all

[head_crap]

12 minutes ago, mariushm said:

You have a huge amount of files and folders.

 

It also depends on whether you have folders that have ntfs compression enabled or not - that can reduce the size of files down to around 50%, if the files are compressible.

 

Also, NTFS keeps file information in a reserved area, they keep there the file name, creation time, modification time, last access time, and other metadata.  If the file is very small, like let's say 100-200 bytes, NTFS also stores this data in the reserved area, instead of reserving the minimum of 512 bytes or 4096 bytes or whatever the sector size is configured at.

 

So, for example, if you have 50 000 files all less than 100-200 bytes (let's say average 150 bytes),  you may have 50 000  x 150 = ~ 7.5 MB that don't show up anywhere because they're stored in that reserved area for file records and metadata.

 

How do I enable NTFS compression?

[mariushm]

6 minutes ago, head_crap said:

How do I enable NTFS compression?

right click on folder, properties, where it shows read only and hidden checkboxes , select Advanced and check "Compress contents to save disk space"

 

Don't do it on folders with music and video files, those are by their nature already compressed, so the folders won't be compressed.

If you can normally compress a file with winzip / 7zip / winrar whatever and get it down to around 75% (or less) of its original size, that file would end up being compressed by the ntfs file system when you enable compression on a folder.  Files that don't compress well will remain uncompressed

[minibois]

Clearly Windows cannot count. This is 5.74TB of data on a 2TB drive.

 

But in all seriousness; hidden data, recycle bin, weird small contents, etc. can make it so a lot more data is used.

 

Use a program like WinDirStat for a more accurate representation of data.

You can use Settings > System > Storage to see a basic representation of data.

[AbydosOne]

13 minutes ago, head_crap said:

Done and done. it didn't change much at all

Sometimes I've had Windows lose track of the Recycle Bin on a drive. Use WinDIrStat or WizTree (faster for NTFS) to see if there's anything left behind (or otherwise larger than expected).

[head_crap]

Just now, AbydosOne said:

Sometimes I've had Windows lose track of the Recycle Bin on a drive. Use WinDIrStat or WizTree (faster for NTFS) to see if there's anything left behind (or otherwise larger than expected).

Ill try that too, thanks.