Question New SSD says 199gb is being used even though I've only used around 53gb

[parkinglot10]

Hi everyone, I bought a new Sandisk 1TB external SSD and installed Halo Infinite to it, which is around 53gb, but all of a sudden my drive says that 199gb has been used. I ran WinDirStat and it also shows that only around 53gb has been used. There is nothing but Halo Infinite installed on the SSD and I'm not sure how to fix this issue.
WinDirStat Screenshot
File Explorer Screenshot
Steam Installed Files Screenshot
Disk Management Screenshot just in case

Thanks for the help!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Out of curiosity, did the drive come formatted as exFAT or NTFS?

 

[parkinglot10]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Out of curiosity, did the drive come formatted as exFAT or NTFS?

I haven't done any formatting afaik, so I think it came formatted as exFAT

 

[zinkles]

Hey!

This could be because of the Allocation Unit size.

An allocation unit size is like a cluster on the disk or a chunk of data on the drive. This size can be set while formatting (defaulted to 4096) the partition. One allocation unit can hold one file/folder, thus if your files are smaller than the allocation unit size, the rest of the space in that cluster cannot be used. If your file is larger than the cluster, no worries, no space is going to waste (unless your file is not a direct multiple of the allocation unit size, but that's out of scope).

https://imgur.com/a/sKBPsIQ

View: https://imgur.com/a/sKBPsIQ

I've attached 2 pictures showing exactly that. I've made a new partition and formatted it with the allocation unit size of 2KB, while another with default allocation unit size. Note: Both instances I used exactly the same files. Notice how the images show the "size on disk" and "size". The Size represents the actual size, and the Size On Disk represents the size while accounting to the allocation unit. when the higher allocation unit is set, the more space that is wasted (when storing files smaller than that size) thus giving this effect. I demonstrated using just a few files, but this grows exponentially when more and more small files are present. There I can see you have about 151,000 files (which most of them are small files except for game files), I demonstrated with just 70 files and it grew quite noticeably. 151,000 files could give you a 50-60GB + increase on the Size On Disk. You can check it yourself too. Select that folder > right click it > properties. You'll see that the Size on disk is different from the actual content which is "Size"

To fix this you will have to reformat the drive (there's no other way afaik) and set the allocation unit size to default.

I hope this was helpful