Disk Space Oddity

[Norman Castle]

On my newly self built computer I have looked at the properties of my system disk. It's showing:
- used space 46.9 GB
- free space 884 GB
- Capacity 931 GB

However when I run a space analyser, called WinDirStat, it shows me that the folders and files on the disk total only 16.0 GB.

Why such a huge difference?

Just curiosity, really. I'm not short of space. It's not a big problem ... I hope.

 

[Big B]

Formatting is part of it. The other is how drive manufacturers denote a gigabyte. The technical definition is 1024 MB, but quite commonly manufacturers use 1 GB as equal to 1000 MB. That's going to add up in the terabyte range.

 

[Wicked Mystic]

On my newly self built computer I have looked at the properties of my system disk. It's showing:
- used space 46.9 GB
- free space 884 GB
- Capacity 931 GB

However when I run a space analyser, called WinDirStat, it shows me that the folders and files on the disk total only 16.0 GB.

Why such a huge difference?

Just curiosity, really. I'm not short of space. It's not a big problem ... I hope.

Probably hidden files, like old Windows restore points, take up some space. Try Windows disk cleanup, start and cleanmgr.msc