OpenEuphoria

Re: [WIN] drive space used != total file space used; whynot?

• Posted by Kat <gertie at PELL.NET> Feb 09, 2002
• 516 views

On 9 Feb 2002, at 22:06, vern at lvp.eastlink.ca wrote:

> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Moyer" <DANIELMOYER at prodigy.net>
> To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
> Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 8:53 PM
> Subject: Re: [WIN] drive space used != total file space used; whynot?
> 
> 
> lesson that you cannot believe everything you see, another is, reality is a
> matter of perspective....both apply to how Windows properties "sees" disk
> comsumption.  Windows XP, for instance, shows a 151 byte file located on drive
> c:\  in two ways when I view it in properties.  1). it says the file is
> 151bytes
> in size ( .151K)  2).  it also states that this one file is taking up 4096
> bytes
> (4K) of drive space.  Is Windows insane and doesn't know what it is saying? 
> No,
> both are true becuase  the  cluster size is 4K and  the whole cluster is
> flagged
> as used.  Should for some reason Defrag (or some other wonderful optimization
> utility) not have been run for awhile these unused portions of clusters add up
> and Windows Properties can wreak havoc on the senses. 

Defrag doesn't use the unused 3945 bytes in the 4096 cluster used by your 
151byte file. What is does is move the contents of all the used clusters to 
the "front" of the disk, and make sure all the clusters used by each file are in
order and next to each other, in the correct sequential order,, and not stored 
in one cluster here, the next cluster over there, and the next cluster back 
somewhere else, you know, in a fragmented manner.

See, in the other thread, shortening a file, if the file uses 2 clusters, and 
there is another file at the end of it, and the first file is shortened to one 
cluster, dos/windoze may use that now-unused cluster to store a portion of a 
3rd file. When it comes time to read that 3rd file, the drive hasto seek all
over
the disk to get all the pieces stored in places like this, consuming more time 
than it should. The modern OSs after dos make this a real problem with their 
"virtual memory" being on harddrive.

Kat