Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Calvin Powers" <calvin AT cspowers.com>]

On 7/17/06, David Minton <dminton AT mindspring.com> wrote:

Also, don¹t forget that the 250GB size is based on a calculation of 1,000
bytes in a kilobyte, while Windows calculates the available size based on
1,024 bytes in a kilobyte. Add formatting overhead, and that is probably
another 20GB.

David

Ahh Good information thanks.

Soo my windows folders are reporting a total of 185GB
So 185Gb x 1000Mb/Gb x 1024bytes/Mb = 189Gb (using the HD definition of the term)
10% is reserved for the recycle bin so call it 25gb
1 gb is still free on the HD

so the total is 215Gb which means there is 35Gb still unaccounted for or a 14% efficiency loss in the NTFS fil system. I'd expect it to be more in the 3-4% range. So I think there's still a bit of a mystery here. But after running these numbers, I think I'm convinced that I'm not going to find any huge quantities of missing storage on the drive. Time to start shopping for a new drive!

Thanks to all for your responses.
Calvin

 

On 07/16/06 10:25 AM, "Calvin Powers" < calvin AT cspowers.com> wrote:

> Arrgh! I wonder if someone can help educate me on the arcane intricacies of
> Windows file systems.
>
> I have a plain ol' off the shelf 250Gb hard drive that I bought at Best Buy a
> few years ago which I use to store my iTunes library. Yesterday I was ripping
> CDs into my iTunes when I started getting disk space low warnings.
>
> So according to iTunes and the folder size pop ups that come up in windows
> when I hover my mouse over the top level folder, I'm only using about 160Gb.
> Yet if I pull up the properties window on the hard drive icon, it shows less
> than 1 Gb of free space left.
>
> I checked the recycle bin allocation and says that it will only use 10% of the
> disk for the recycle bin. So add another 25 Gb to the 160 and I'm still only
> at 185Gb. Where did the other 65Gb go? Is this due to the "cluster size"
> issue? The disk is formatted as NTFS and I thought only FAT drives had
> problems with losign space due to cluster size.
>
> Is there anything else I can do to try to salvage space on the dirve? Would
> defragging help at all? Because the bulk of the files on that drive are MP3
> files, I wouldn't expect to save much space by enabling compression.
>
> Given that my iTunes library is going to grow indefinitely, what would y'all
> recommend to me for ever increasing storage space needs? I've heard there are
> network attachable storage devices that can sit on your windows network and
> serve up large amounts of disk storage. Are these worth the money? Any
> specific recommendations?
>
>
> ---
> Come and play at the InterNetWorkers Web site!
> http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/
> You are currently subscribed to InterNetWorkers mailing list
> To unsubscribe visit http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/internetworkers
>


---
Come and play at the InterNetWorkers Web site!   http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/
You are currently subscribed to InterNetWorkers mailing list
To unsubscribe visit http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/internetworkers