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  4. Yet Another Mystery in Win2K Server

Yet Another Mystery in Win2K Server

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved System Admin
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  • R Offline
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    Roger Wright
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    This is odd. Windows Explorer shows that my C: drive has 5490MB in use, but if I total the used space for all of the folders on the drive it comes to only 3716MB - size on disk, not file size. Which value is 'real'? And why is there such a huge discrepancy? "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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    • R Roger Wright

      This is odd. Windows Explorer shows that my C: drive has 5490MB in use, but if I total the used space for all of the folders on the drive it comes to only 3716MB - size on disk, not file size. Which value is 'real'? And why is there such a huge discrepancy? "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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      J Dunlap
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      It may be because of cluster size. On a large drive, the cluster size is about 32KB. So space is used up in blocks of 32KB. This means that the minimum amount of space a file can take up is 32KB, and if it was, say, 35KB, it would have to take up 64KB of actual disk space.

      "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - Jesus
      "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

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      • J J Dunlap

        It may be because of cluster size. On a large drive, the cluster size is about 32KB. So space is used up in blocks of 32KB. This means that the minimum amount of space a file can take up is 32KB, and if it was, say, 35KB, it would have to take up 64KB of actual disk space.

        "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - Jesus
        "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

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        Roger Wright
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        That's why I used the 'size on disk' figure instead of the file size itself. The former takes into account the cluster waste. I've never needed to defrag a Win2K disk before; perhaps it's time... "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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        • R Roger Wright

          That's why I used the 'size on disk' figure instead of the file size itself. The former takes into account the cluster waste. I've never needed to defrag a Win2K disk before; perhaps it's time... "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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          Sarvesvara BVKS Dasa
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          If it is FAT 32 and is still in the same space problems... then defrag may help it. If you use that as a standalone PC with less of file permission options... you can try to convert it to a NTFS file system. This gets better. The above is something I observed with my PC.. I was born intelligent
          Education ruined me!.

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          • S Sarvesvara BVKS Dasa

            If it is FAT 32 and is still in the same space problems... then defrag may help it. If you use that as a standalone PC with less of file permission options... you can try to convert it to a NTFS file system. This gets better. The above is something I observed with my PC.. I was born intelligent
            Education ruined me!.

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            Roger Wright
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            Nah... this one was born with NTFS. I never use anything else if NTFS is available. I know that NT4 had a hell of a time with fragmentation, and it didn't ship with a defrag routine. I thought that Win2K solved the problem, but I guess there's a good reason that they included a defrag utility with NTFS5. "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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            • R Roger Wright

              Nah... this one was born with NTFS. I never use anything else if NTFS is available. I know that NT4 had a hell of a time with fragmentation, and it didn't ship with a defrag routine. I thought that Win2K solved the problem, but I guess there's a good reason that they included a defrag utility with NTFS5. "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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              jhaga
              wrote on last edited by
              #6

              Everything is not stored in files. NTFS keeps alot of data directly in MFT(Master File Table) and that is no file. My disk has some 100MB in MFT skål jhaga

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              • J jhaga

                Everything is not stored in files. NTFS keeps alot of data directly in MFT(Master File Table) and that is no file. My disk has some 100MB in MFT skål jhaga

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                Roger Wright
                wrote on last edited by
                #7

                That would account for some, but >1500MB? It just doesn't sound right somehow... The idea of defragging the drive makes me nervous, though. There are so many processes running from the C: drive that I'm not sure how defrag will behave. I've had problems with it on lesser systems (Win9x) and haven't heard anything, pro or con, about the robustness of the Win2K Server version. "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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                • R Roger Wright

                  That would account for some, but >1500MB? It just doesn't sound right somehow... The idea of defragging the drive makes me nervous, though. There are so many processes running from the C: drive that I'm not sure how defrag will behave. I've had problems with it on lesser systems (Win9x) and haven't heard anything, pro or con, about the robustness of the Win2K Server version. "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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                  jhaga
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #8

                  Before you can defrag you must run some kind of chkdsk /f on the disk. It is possible that you have 1500MB in lost clusters but I don't find it very likely. A defrag program that uses the underlying operation system should be totaly safe to use. Of course if you have a power failure then you will probably loose one file. jhaga

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                  • J jhaga

                    Before you can defrag you must run some kind of chkdsk /f on the disk. It is possible that you have 1500MB in lost clusters but I don't find it very likely. A defrag program that uses the underlying operation system should be totaly safe to use. Of course if you have a power failure then you will probably loose one file. jhaga

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                    Roger Wright
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #9

                    Chkdsk finds no errors at all on the drive, so I guess I'll go ahead with the defrag... "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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                    • R Roger Wright

                      Chkdsk finds no errors at all on the drive, so I guess I'll go ahead with the defrag... "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom

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                      jhaga
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #10

                      Here you can find a nice tool for exploring your disks fragmentation http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/defrag.shtml with source code.

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