Vista and HDD free space calculation...

jdratlif · Post by **jdratlif** » Mon May 12, 2008 10:11 pm

I think Vista is lying to me about my free space.

It says the capacity is 149 GB, and free space is 40 GB. If I go the root folder and ask for properties on every folder. If I add all those numbers together, I get 92 GB used. Unless they've changed subtraction rules, 149 - 92 != 40.

So, assuming 149 - 92 still equals 57, I'm missing 17 GB. Let's assume Windows hasn't told me about the 2 GB hibernation or page files and make that 13 missing GB. Is Windows hiding another 13 GB from me, or should I really have 13 GB more space?

Any suggestions where my missing space is?

Before you answer, I have run Disk Cleanup, Defrag, emptied the recycle bin, and cleared the cache in both IE and Firefox (even though I don't use IE - directly anyways).

edit: Nevermind. I found another option in Disk Cleanup to erase old restore points. This returned 11 GB to me. I'm willing to believe there are 2 legitimate GB hiding in system files somewhere.

paulguy · Post by **paulguy** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:55 am

Were you adding size or size on disk? Pretty much every filesystem out there will have waste, some more than others. NTFS also probably has a lot of metadata.

Rashidi · Post by **Rashidi** » Tue May 13, 2008 10:54 am

11 GB on system restore...

i knew it.
that anti-system-restore-group were telling the truth.

Post by **odditude** » Tue May 13, 2008 2:12 pm

paulguy wrote:Were you adding size or size on disk? Pretty much every filesystem out there will have waste, some more than others. NTFS also probably has a lot of metadata.

All of the hotfix/service pack backups in the Windows directory are NTFS compressed, too - that will affect size vs size on disk.

ZH/Franky · Post by **ZH/Franky** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:51 pm

I'm willing to believe there are 2 legitimate GB hiding in system files somewhere

Pagefile, etc?

Or does Vista not use a pagefile, but a swap partition or something now?

jdratlif · Post by **jdratlif** » Wed May 14, 2008 8:09 pm

paulguy wrote:Were you adding size or size on disk? Pretty much every filesystem out there will have waste, some more than others. NTFS also probably has a lot of metadata.

Size on disk. I don't know what my cluster size is, but i tried to take that into account.

Metadata could be responsible for 2 GB I suppose. I don't know what it stores. IIRC, Linux ext file systems reserve 5% for root. NTFS may have something similar.

Franky wrote:
I'm willing to believe there are 2 legitimate GB hiding in system files somewhere
Pagefile, etc?

Or does Vista not use a pagefile, but a swap partition or something now?

I already factored in the sizes of the pagefile and the hibernation file, both of which are around 2 GB. AFAIK, vista uses a pagefile; there is a 2 GB hidden system file in the root folder of my C: named pagefile.sys.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Wed May 14, 2008 9:21 pm

another thing to note: hard drives are advertised using gigabytes of 1000 MB instead of the expected 1024 MB. MS might still be inconsistent on which unit its using.

open up command prompt, type in chkdsk, and tells your cluster size, total number of clusters, number of files, and number of clusters used.