Disk space usage discrepancy

[wildpig1234]

I just installed Win 7 Ultimate on my UMPC, Viliv X70. I am surprised at how well it runs (using optimized for best performance setting without aero) on my fairly slow umpc (1.3ghz atom, 1 gb ram, 16gb ssd). Even the diskspace requirement surprised me.

But the disk space usage is also what i have question about. When i right click and select property for drive C, the used space is 7.27 GB and free space is 2.95 GB on a 10.2 GB partition.

But when i go to the root dir of drive C and select all the files and folders and right click on property, the total space used by 65 thousands files is 9.81 GB.

I don't have disk compression enabled.

Anyone has an answer to this? all of my other drives shows the expected disk space usage whether by right clicking on the drive letter and select property or by highlighting all the files and folders and select property?

Btw, i really miss the "ask me what to do" option in XP when you do shutdown in Win 7. I guess there is no way to bring that back unless anyone here knows how?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Normal behavior.

Mine shows 11 occupied one way and 21 the other. If I show hidden files, it says 17.

 

[Frostmourne]

Click the arrow next to shutdown and choose what you want to do, for your second question.

 

[Night Hawk]

Hello Wildpig1234 Welcome to the Se7en Forums!

When seeing two different amounts of drive space used one thing to add into the mix there is the paging file seen with any Windows installation by default. Windows reserves a certain amount of drive space for that as well as the creation of new system restore points.

As for options at shutdown, logooff, restart you bring over the dropdown menu to the right for seleting one or the other. For changing the default option seen for the button itsself you Birng up the Start menu and right click on a blank spot to select "properties" and go to the "power button options" to select one from the dropdown list of choices in the properties screen there.

The images here will show how those look.

 

[Frostmourne]

Night Hawk - you haven't disabled the option to highlight newly installed programs? I always found that annoying.

 

[Night Hawk]

Night Hawk - you haven't disabled the option to highlight newly installed programs? I always found that annoying.

Why?

 

[Frostmourne]

Just have - I know what I installed, 7.

 

[Night Hawk]

I'm still waiting for Wildpig1234 to have a chance to reply here before we go way too far off the subject but can still take care of a few things easy enough.

 

[wildpig1234]

Hello Wildpig1234 Welcome to the Se7en Forums!

When seeing two different amounts of drive space used one thing to add into the mix there is the paging file seen with any Windows installation by default. Windows reserves a certain amount of drive space for that as well as the creation of new system restore points.

As for options at shutdown, logoff, restart you bring over the dropdown menu to the right for seleting one or the other. For changing the default option seen for the button itsself you Birng up the Start menu and right click on a blank spot to select "properties" and go to the "power button options" to select one from the dropdown list of choices in the properties screen there.

The images here will show how those look.

My pagefile is on another partition, drive D. System restore is disabled on all drives. I don't understand why right clicking on drive C, and select property it says i have 2.95 GB freespace in a 10.2 GB partition, but selecting all the files and folder on drive C and right click and select property, it says i am using 9.81 GB for all the files on drive C. Does that means i really don't have 2.95 GB free? Does windows 7 somehow use compression even though i tell it not to? I do have show all files enabled btw

There;s no option to set power button to the option "ask me what to do". also when you click shut down button, it does so immediately without giving you another dialog box (with the choice of logoff, restart or shut down) to confirm like in XP. From what i heard, they did away with this starting with Vista because some people don't bother to click on shutdown again on the second dialog box that comes up. This is bad mistake because its very easy to click on shutdown button by mistake. Yes, you can click on the arrow next to the shutdown button, but that is a small arrow.

 

[logicearth]

My pagefile is on another partition, drive D. System restore is disabled on all drives. I don't understand why right clicking on drive C, and select property it says i have 2.95 GB freespace in a 10.2 GB partition, but selecting all the files and folder on drive C and right click and select property, it says i am using 9.81 GB for all the files on drive C. Does that means i really don't have 2.95 GB free? Does windows 7 somehow use compression even though i tell it not to? I do have show all files enabled btw

The properties of the C drive are correct in what it tells you. When reviewing file size by going though folder properties, a lot of the files are counted multiple times. This is because of folder junctions and hardlinks. The drive properties however, does its calculation of space by examining the bitmap which is by far the most accurate.

 

[wildpig1234]

My pagefile is on another partition, drive D. System restore is disabled on all drives. I don't understand why right clicking on drive C, and select property it says i have 2.95 GB freespace in a 10.2 GB partition, but selecting all the files and folder on drive C and right click and select property, it says i am using 9.81 GB for all the files on drive C. Does that means i really don't have 2.95 GB free? Does windows 7 somehow use compression even though i tell it not to? I do have show all files enabled btw

The properties of the C drive are correct in what it tells you. When reviewing file size by going though folder properties, a lot of the files are counted multiple times. This is because of folder junctions and hardlinks. The drive properties however, does its calculation of space by examining the bitmap which is by far the most accurate.

Hmm, that explanation is the best one so far. But still strange. It just strange because i haven't seen this behavior of files counted multiple times due to folder junctions and hardlinks in XP. Is this something different in win 7?

 

[Greg S]

If you don't use Hibernation, you can probably free up another gig by making sure Hibernation is disabled and deleting the hibrfile.sys

 

[Night Hawk]

Where does the drive space go? When going to use a 16gb flash drive some 15.04gb will be found available there. The image here shows 142+gb of data including the 7 installation itself deducted from a 1tb drive.

For the 10.2gb C you have there before adding anything on it you should be seeing some 9.49949026107788gb according to one hard drive calculator seen at The Tomorrow Times: The Hard Drive Capacity Calculator

To convert decimal units of measurement as drives are labeled into binary units of measurement to see where the drive space goes you can thank Airbot for the best multiplier of 0.9313226 multiplied by each gigabyte of hard drive space.

Besides having the paging file created on D one other factor not mentioned is what? system restore points

 

[Tepid]

You will get the most accurate reading (as far as I know) of your hard drive space and files on it by using a one of couple apps I like.....

WinDirStat Portable | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives

freshney.org :: Xinorbis

I don't have an answer for the original question though.

 

[wildpig1234]

Where does the drive space go? When going to use a 16gb flash drive some 15.04gb will be found available there. The image here shows 142+gb of data including the 7 installation itself deducted from a 1tb drive.

For the 10.2gb C you have there before adding anything on it you should be seeing some 9.49949026107788gb according to one hard drive calculator seen at The Tomorrow Times: The Hard Drive Capacity Calculator

To convert decimal units of measurement as drives are labeled into binary units of measurement to see where the drive space goes you can thank Airbot for the best multiplier of 0.9313226 multiplied by each gigabyte of hard drive space.

Besides having the paging file created on D one other factor not mentioned is what? system restore points

I am not sure if most people understand what i am saying yet. On that box that Night Hawk shows for drive C property, mine would say the used space is 7.27 GB and free space is 2.95 GB and total capacity of 10.2 GB. But if i manually highlight all the files and folders on drive C and right click and select property, it would say that there are like 65k files and a few hundred folders and they use 9.81 GB total.

Does anyone see that this does not jive? the used space stated in the drive c property box should equal to the total space that all my files and folders use unless like Logicearth said before that some files are being counted more than once somehow.

I probably will make a screen capture to clarify....

i did have restore point and hibernation disable. And I am not talking about converting between binary and decimal definition of GB.... The number mentioned in my posts are all binary GB.

 

[Frostmourne]

Don't disable system restore - it is essential, configure it so it takes the minimum space required.

 

[Tepid]

I do understand what you are saying,,,, and I am sure there is a logical explanation of it.

When looking at the properties of all files on C: are you looking at Size on Disk or Size?
I think Size on Disk should correlate with Local C: Properties Used Space.

 

[Night Hawk]

The screen posted earlier is in binary there as well being looked in Windows. That comes out to an even figure with the "Hidden system files" options unchecked in the menu bar>tools>folder options>view tab.

The files unaccounted for there would be those if you left everything at the default view settings and be one explaination right off for not adding those into the total.

 

[Tepid]

Yep, your right Hawk, i see it now.
I'm on XP SP3 and notice the same thing

 

[wildpig1234]

here's my screenshot. I did this for all my other drives and they all make sense except for C drive.

there should be a simple explanation....