Size vs Size on disk?

[Sjaak Snor]

Hello guy,

 

I was just wondering when you right click and select propterties on for example a file, there are two values, one named Size and another one named Size on Disk.
How could the size differ from the size on the Disk?

 

 

[homeap5]

File is written in clusters. Size of cluster is (NTFS) 4096 bytes, so file that has 2 bytes takes the same amount of space on drive like file that has 4092 bytes. If file has 4120 bytes, it takes 8096 bytes on disk.

 

Create file with notepad and check.

[Sjaak Snor]

Damnn sound intrestinggg, thank you for your reply! And finally explains this mistery for me?

[Koeshi]

There is one other use for the difference size listings.  If you right-click on a folder in explorer and go Properties>Advanced you will see an option named "Compress contents to save disk space".  If you select this the contents (and optionally sub-folders and their contents) will be compressed, not to the same extent as zipping them would do, but I have seen reductions in size of several gigabytes with minimal effect on access times.  So in this instance the size on disk will be smaller than the actual size.  It should be noted though that this is really meant for document storage and the likes rather than same game files and especially not system files.

[Barnack]

also remember to defrag your system if you're running windows