Weird free space problem with 2TB drive

Smaller cluster sizes are also going to increase the potential for fragmentation and the amount of seeking the drive will be doing. The default is the default because it represents a happy medium between storage capacity and performance.

And yes, journaling by itself is a compelling argument for NTFS, even if you don't use any of the other features.
 
Mercutio said:
Smaller cluster sizes are also going to increase the potential for fragmentation and the amount of seeking the drive will be doing. The default is the default because it represents a happy medium between storage capacity and performance.

And yes, journaling by itself is a compelling argument for NTFS, even if you don't use any of the other features.
Click to expand...

+1
 
FAT32 does not support large files, so NTFS is needed for that reason too.
 
Stereodude said:
Why are you sweating a few percentage loss of free space? What's it matter?
Click to expand...
I'm anal about stuff like that. It's small in terms of percentage, yes. But I also remember the days when 2.5GB equalled a few good-sized hard drives. It also annoys me on another level-namely sloppy bookkeeping on the part of Windows. I might understand reserving some amount of space on a drive for future MFT expansion, to keep it from filling up completely, etc. Fine. But why is a fixed percentage being used? Why not a fixed percentage only up until the reserved space hits a certain point ( say 100 MB ), and after that the reserved space gets no larger? Add this to the list of dumb things Windows does, or at least Windows XP.
 
timwhit said:
He's talking about exFat which does support large files.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I'm losing track of the plot by now. :)
Any FAT seems like a bad idea for a large drive, especially after a system crash. Even the external drives are supplied with NTFS now.
 
It is all nice and fine to get the last possible byte out of a drive. I can easily see being obsessive just to find out what is going on. That being said, you need to ask yourself what is it worth to you. obviously a great deal but Is it worth having to switch from Windows to Linux perhaps? Is it worth the possible file corruption that FAT can have, that NTFS would automatically fix before it was a problem? Is it worth the time spent now required to defrag your drive to keep performance reasonable that NTFS doesn't seem to have? Is it worth the file system speed drop that comes from having to search directories linearly rather than using a b-tree? Really how much is this space worth to you?
 
BingBangBop said:
It is all nice and fine to get the last possible byte out of a drive. I can easily see being obsessive just to find out what is going on. That being said, you need to ask yourself what is it worth to you. obviously a great deal but Is it worth having to switch from Windows to Linux perhaps? Is it worth the possible file corruption that FAT can have, that NTFS would automatically fix before it was a problem? Is it worth the time spent now required to defrag your drive to keep performance reasonable that NTFS doesn't seem to have? Is it worth the file system speed drop that comes from having to search directories linearly rather than using a b-tree? Really how much is this space worth to you?
Click to expand...
If you want to place a monetary value on the "lost" space, it would be about 12.5 cents since I paid $99.99 for the drive. Certainly not worthwhile from a money perspective. In fact, I would imagine just using NTFS compression for my backup folders I would gain many times the lost space relative to exFAT. And I certainly don't NEED to worry about filling a 2TB drive at this point in time. Even if I did, I would be adding to my storage space long before I was down to my last 2.5GB. No, this is more a case of just finding out what is going on ( and sometimes learning why you have a problem ends up being an education in how something works-in this case file systems ), and also experimentation ( I enjoyed trying different cluster sizes with exFAT just to see what would happen ).

Another possible reason to find out what's going on is I've heard of warez sites hijacking space on people's drives, then making the files/directories invisible to them. That was actually the first thought which crossed my mind when the drive just suddenly lost the space. Thankfully after checking my other NTFS volumes I found this behavoir is consistent across the board. With an NTFS volume Windows consistently reports you have about 1/8% less of the drive's capacity available compared to what chkdsk reports.

So at this point I'm leaning towards just going back to NTFS. At the very least I gained something by installing the XP patches for exFAT just in case I want to use it on a USB drive to get around the FAT32 file size limitation. For all I know if/when I upgrade to Windows 7 the problem might go away.
 
jtr1962 said:
Another possible reason to find out what's going on is I've heard of warez sites hijacking space on people's drives, then making the files/directories invisible to them.
Click to expand...

Maybe you should avoid the illegal sites. :lol:
Do the malwares attack all drives or only C:?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top