Is there any explanation behind this strange case of missing hard drive space?

[mh1314]

I have a partition in my hard drive that is 1.99 GB (this is my old computer ^^'') in size.
The system (Windows 98 SE) is showing how it only has 184 MB of space left.
However, when I highlight all the files and folders in the partition, it shows that their combined size is only 1.12 GB.

That means that 880 MB of space is missing for no reason?
What could possibly be taking up those space?

Thank you for your help!

 

[Snapster]

You tried looking for hidden files ?

 

[Concillian]

FAT32 has large cluster sizes. Even a 1byte file needs to us a whole cluster (usually 32kb, I think)

If you have a large collection of very small files, then they will eat up a bunch of space that cannot be used for anything else.

 

[mh1314]

Hi. I have included hidden files, so I don't think that is the problem.
About FAT32, I am sure my drive is FAT32. My question is, how come when I highlight all the files, Windows still say that they are only 1.12 GB rather than 1.82?

Thanks! Just want to understand more.

 

[ShadowBlade]

make sure youre looking at size on disk, not size
i asked a question about this in OS, i was told size is the size of the file and size on disk is how big the file is in cluster size

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: ShadowBlade
make sure youre looking at size on disk, not size
i asked a question about this in OS, i was told size is the size of the file and size on disk is how big the file is in cluster size

this is correct. have you taken into account your pagefile space?

 

[mh1314]

Sorry for asking a stupid question, but which number is the size on disk from Properties?
I see 1,904,574,464 bytes used, and that is about 1,816 MB. I guess this must be why!!!
Wow. Thanks! This is sad, as so much space is wasted and my old comp only has a 4.2 GB hard-drive

 

[Concillian]

Generally browser cache accounts for a large chunk of the used space, even though the size is restricted. Size of the cache is restricted by actual size, not taking into account clusters used. I remember FAT32 machines with 32MB browser caches that would actually eat up well over 100 MB of actual space.

Clear out all the browser caches and I bet you pick up a few hundred megs. Also use ZIP to compress things you don't think you'll need for a while. it makes one large file out of several small files, so it avoids lost space due to cluster size issues.

This is part of why NTFS is used on Win2k and WinXP, 64 bit filesystem allows for more clusters and decreased cluster size. Slightly more overhead, but less wasted space.

 

[mh1314]

Wow. I see. Thanks for the explanation. Maybe storing things in zip files is not a bad idea.
I have avoided doing so in the past because it takes a long time for my antivirus to scan compressed files.

But now that space is priority, I would definitely do it =)
Thank you everyone for helping me with my problem!