Disk Space Oddity

Discussion in 'Storage Devices' started by Norman Castle, Jul 3, 2015.

  1. Norman Castle

    Norman Castle Geek Trainee

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    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.
     
    Norman Castle, Jul 3, 2015
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  2. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    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.
     
    Big B, Jul 4, 2015
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  3. Wicked Mystic

    Wicked Mystic Big Geek

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    Probably hidden files, like old Windows restore points, take up some space. Try Windows disk cleanup, start and cleanmgr.msc
     
    Wicked Mystic, Jul 8, 2015
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