[SOLVED] SSD has less available storage than I calculated

Stef Pro

Commendable
Dec 15, 2019
50
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1,545
Windows file explorer says that my SSD has 125 Gb free out of 237 Gb. So I went into the drive and checked how much storage every file uses. After I subtracted the Gb of all the files from the 227 Gb of the SSD, I calculated that the SSD should have had 150 GB available. That's 25 more than what is displaying. So, what's happening here? Are there any hidden files, or is file explorer not accurate with the calculation of storage?
 
Also, every file system (NTFS, FAT, etc) does use disk space to describe file properties (meta data) and location on disk. You'll notice this when you do "view properties" for many files, you'll se that there is a noticeable difference between the file size and the total space on disk occupied by that file. How much difference will vary depending on file system and the block size of the file system.

As a consequence, A very large number of small files will result in higher disk usage than a small number of large files.
 
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