Space remaining on hard disk ?

[anilkumarby]

Hi all,

I have an P2 400MHz, windows 98, seagate 3GB hard disk. When I do an
right click on c: drive and see the properties; it shows 987.2MB space
free. But when I do an ctrl a ( i.e, select all) inside C: for all files &
folders and see the properties, it says 2.79GB (total size of used space).
ANd when I am downloading something, even though 900MB is free, it says
out of disk space and asks for disk cleanup.
What might be the reason for strange behavior of directory size?
I have latest upadte of antivirus & there is no chance of virus.

Thanks and regards
Anil

[mjc]

Double Post.....

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Bogart101]

MJC wheres your reply?
i also have the same prob but im using here a loptop.
hope you can help us with this one.
thanks

[Dinosaur]

I think that one issue here is the Public Relations or Advertising Disk size and the size as viewed by the BIOS & OS. The other issue is wasted space at the end of each file.

An advertising GB is 1,000,000,000 (One billion) bytes, while the BIOS & OS usually consider a GB to be 1,073,741,824 (1024*1024*1024) bytes, or perhaps 1,048,576,000 (1024*1024*1000) bytes.

The advertising people call a disk with 3,000,000,000 bytes a 3GB disk, when it is really only about 2.79GB (The number you mentioned).

I have a C partition on my 40G Disk which is reported by My Computer as having the following capacity.

12,572,377,088 bytes and as 11.7GB (The latter is rounded), indicating that Windows 98 considers a GB to be 1024*1024*1024 bytes.

The available space reported is usually misleading (erroneous?) due to wasted space at the end of each file. I think Windows 98 uses a 4KB (4096 byte) cluster size. A file with 1 byte will use a full cluster, but be reported as 1 byte used and 4095 bytes free. If you have a lot of small files, this can add up to a lot of wasted space.

BTW: If you have trouble adding up to the true size of the disk, there is another unreported amount of space. The File Directory, FAT (File Allocation Table), and some overhead space for each directory are usually not included in the space used by files.

Does the above answer your questions?

When disks were really small, I advised secretaries to combine word processing files. Instead of having 25 files for 25 short business letters to a particular client, I had them treat each letter as a separate page in a larger file.

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Gouverneur, the Dinosaur from pre-compter era.
Eschew Obfuscation!
If one hundred million people believe a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea.

[rond36]

When you do a ctrl+a do you have explorer set to show all files if not it will not select hidden system files and will not include the drive space that these files take up. It also will not show the swap file which can be quite large if you don't have a lot of RAM installed.

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How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867)
WindowsBBS.com (http://www.WindowsBBS.com/index.php?referrerid=115) Is back online, check it out

[anilkumarby]

Thanks for the replies.
I am now satisfied with the reply from "Dinosaur".