Linked Questions

5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Difference between SIZE and SIZE ON DISK on a pc? Why is SIZE ON DISK always greater? [duplicate]

I created a simple text file. I saw its size. it was 0 bytes. Then i entered alphabet 'a' and checked the size of it. IT says: Size : 1 bytes Size on disk: 4.00 KB(4096 bytes) What is the ...
Sandeep's user avatar
  • 633
1 vote
3 answers
560 views

Windows - File size differs from size on disk? [duplicate]

It isn't a major concern of mine, but I am curious as to why a .txt file's size is 21bytes, and the size of it on disk is 4kilobytes. Here is a snapshot of what I mean: I am also wondering if the ...
SomeRandomProgrammer's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
398 views

Actual File Size on Windows [duplicate]

I have a question related to what I'm currently testing/working on/trying to understand. I created a small text file with the following content abc.txt ABCDEF Now when I view File Properties I ...
Dhiwakar Ravikumar's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
834 views

Size On Disk Smaller Than File Size BUT HD Getting Full Based On File Size [duplicate]

Well the title says it all. As you can see in the screenshot here, all those big files have a waaaay smaller size on disk, but when I click HD properties it´s getting full based on the file size and ...
Robertt Crown's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
51 views

File size discrepancy in Windows Explorer [duplicate]

While looking at the properties in Explorer there seems to be a discrepancy in the displayed values. One value is presented when I hover the cursor over the file, and the other is displayed in ...
Kalamalka Kid's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
37 views

Size vs Size on disk [duplicate]

I’m trying to figure out why in the properties of a folder the “size” of the folder is different than the “size on disk”. According to the other posts I’ve read (for example "What is the ...
Entropy's user avatar
  • 126
311 votes
9 answers
64k views

Why is there such a big difference between "Size" and "Size on disk"?

As you can see below, there is so much difference between the Size and Size on disk fields in my folder. Why is that? I know that Size on disk should be a little more than Size because of allocation ...
vfsoraki's user avatar
  • 2,037
40 votes
6 answers
179k views

Is it best to reformat the hard drive to exFAT using 512kb chunk, or smaller or bigger chunks?

I can reformat a brand new 2TB WD Passport drive to exFAT, with choice of many "Allocation Unit Size": 128kb 256kb 512kb 1024kb 4096kb 16384kb 32768kb which one is best if this drive is mainly used ...
nonopolarity's user avatar
  • 9,636
19 votes
5 answers
27k views

Mac OS X not reporting directory sizes correctly?

In Finder, I've noticed that if I duplicate some .app files (in the Applications folder), Finder will show that the duplicate .app file is not the same size as the original. This file size ...
pacoverflow's user avatar
  • 1,975
2 votes
2 answers
7k views

How to determine the actual size on disk for a folder in Windows

I am either confused as to how Windows calculates the Size on disk value in the properties of a folder, or it is incorrect. The cluster size on my drive is 4096 byes. I've created a folder called ...
Josh Comley's user avatar
  • 4,102
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why does "Size on disk" vary when "Size" does not with the same set of files?

I understand why "Size on disk" is larger than "Size". I have three NTFS-formatted drives with the same exact data on it. Their allocation unit is 4096 bytes. The number of files and folders as well ...
Mooseman's user avatar
  • 1,490
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

file size returned from ls - Linux vs OS X

I have been moving a large number of files between a Linux system (ext3) and Mac OS X (HFS) and have noticed the slight variation in how the file size is reported by the ls command. Having done some ...
dtlussier's user avatar
  • 2,175
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

I know base 2 and base 10 , MB and MiB, but i'm not understanding the byte counts shown for a directory, by du and by windows explorer

The du command shows 43G in use. I'm not sure whether that's base 2 in the sense of 2^30 or if it's base 10, in the sense of 10^9. But anyhow - Running this du command from cygwin, to see the size ...
barlop's user avatar
  • 23.8k
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Samsung SSD disk space - How to make sure the Size and SizeOnDisk space difference is not too high

I have a folder in Samsung Portable SSD T5 model. When I connect the SSD to MAC and right click the folder and select Get Info to find the folder size then I see the following: 170 GB (410 GB on disk) ...
firstpostcommenter's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
565 views

Windows 10 comparing size on disk of two folders

I just copied very large folder from my portable drive to my laptop running win 10. For these two folders (in different locations) file explorer shows same size, but different size on disk. Everything ...
user1700890's user avatar

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