Missing GB's

[HinkyDink]

One of the drives in my system is a WD VRap 150 GB, SATA which I dedicate to only run Flight Simulation. When first installed and formatted it showed 139 GB’s available. I have two files loaded on this drive: Flight Simulator X taking 62.3 GB’s of space. I also have flight Simulator Addons taking 4.63 KB. A total of 63 GB’s. When I subtract the 63 GB’s from the 139 GB’s I get 76 GB’s that should be available. However properties only show 36 GB’s available. That shows that there is 40 GB’s somewhere. Flight Simulator X runs best on a drive that has around 50% free space and I would prefer to run it that way. No one has been able to tell me what happened to the 40 GB’s as yet.
My question is: I have these files backed up as image files on an external drive. Would it be safe to delete these files from the HDD, do a new format and then re-install the FSX files back on the HDD? Is there a chance that will restore the lost 40 GB’s? Am I liable to get into trouble here? Thanks for the help.

 

[whitrzac]

if the game is taking up 63gb, the addons might be 40gb and not the 4KB like your saying...

 

[xenocide]

It sounds as though somewhere you accidentally duplicated a large quantity of files. I don't know much about FSX but I highly doubt a standard installation uses 64GB and am even more doubtful that there are any useful mods on Earth that are as small as 4KB.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

if the game is taking up 63gb, the addons might be 40gb and not the 4KB like your saying...

I second Whitrzac.

A 63 GB game implies a huge amount of data. I would assume that the expansion includes extra vehicles and setting, and this data may not be stored where you think.

In unreal tournament 2004 modifications installed a relatively small file for new game types ( easily identifiable), but installed huge texture packs and other files (inside heavily populated folders from the initial install).

I would verify that the expansion did in fact install where you thought it installed. In addition, check to see if the drive has a paging file associated with it. 8 GB paging+ 31 GB textures/data+ 4 KB referrence files = 40 GB. While this is a very rough ballpark figure, it does make sense for what you are describing.

 

[francis511]

Download windirstat. run it and find out exactly which files are taking the space

 

[Athlonite]

Considering the min required HDD space is only 14GB I highly doubt the game would need an extra 50GB of space for an full custom install..... something is taking up far to much room somewhere and WinDirStat is a good start to finding out where its going and whats taking it, also check system volume Information folder size at default it'll suck up 12% of HDD space for restore files, the good thing about it is you can turn it off

 

[FordGT90Concept]

150 GB= 150,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB = 1,073741,824 bytes
150,000,000,000 bytes / 1,073741,824 bytes = 139.698 GiB

139 GiB is correct. Windows always divides by base 2 (binary bytes), not base 10 (decimal bytes) when displaying capacties.

The 40 GiB that is unexplained could easily belong to Windows. Service packs, registry keys, updates, temp files, and and page file quickly add up.

I would also highly recommend running ScanDisk if you haven't done so recently. A bunch of sectors on the drive may have gone corrupt.

 

[micropage7]

check any temp or hidden files and do disk clean up.
it could be from there

 

[Athlonite]

150 GB= 150,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB = 1,073741,824 bytes
150,000,000,000 bytes / 1,073741,824 bytes = 139.698 GiB

139 GiB is correct. Windows always divides by base 2 (binary bytes), not base 10 (decimal bytes) when displaying capacties.

And it's only like that with HDD's/SSD's/flash drives/DVDr/CDr/BDr no other form of PC measurement uses base10 so pretty much manufacturers of storage media are a bunch of efing liars and they only do it to make their products seem bigger than they are.... anyone can tell you a PC or a Mac no matter what file system is used Fat/ntfs/ext....etc etc uses base2 because thats what PC's ( generalized ) use it's either 1 or 0 it's most certainly never 5 or 7 or 4 or 9 etc etc ...

 

[95Viper]

I just don't understand why people get so upset/frustrated/angered/________ (fill-in-the-blank) at a specification that has been around since the beginning of the storage device. I guess it is just me.

Back on topic:

HinkyDink, have you checked to make sure the recycle bin ain't been accidentally enabled on that drive?

 

[Deleted member 3]

Right-click the folder, check size and size on disk. If the difference is large, look at filecount, might be zillions.

 

[silkstone]

And it's only like that with HDD's/SSD's/flash drives/DVDr/CDr/BDr no other form of PC measurement uses base10 so pretty much manufacturers of storage media are a bunch of efing liars and they only do it to make their products seem bigger than they are.... anyone can tell you a PC or a Mac no matter what file system is used Fat/ntfs/ext....etc etc uses base2 because thats what PC's ( generalized ) use it's either 1 or 0 it's most certainly never 5 or 7 or 4 or 9 etc etc ...

Scientifically speaking the hard-drive manufacturers are doing it correctly and the software is wrong.

Furthermore, the software is doubly wrong when stating that 1024 MB is equal to 1 GB, because a "true" gigabyte would be 2^9 bytes — only be 512 MB in size. But convention states that 1024 MB = 1.0 GB

 

[Athlonite]

I just don't understand why people get so upset/frustrated/angered/________ (fill-in-the-blank) at a specification that has been around since the beginning of the storage device. I guess it is just me.

Back on topic:

HinkyDink, have you checked to make sure the recycle bin ain't been accidentally enabled on that drive?

probably just me showing my age

but yes check Recycle bin and system restore both have high initial settings for size

 

[Deleted member 3]

because a "true" gigabyte would be 2^9 bytes — only be 512 MB in size.

Source for this wisdom?

 

[Athlonite]

actually it's 2^10 bytes = 1024MB or 1GB

 

[FordGT90Concept]

And it's only like that with HDD's/SSD's/flash drives/DVDr/CDr/BDr no other form of PC measurement uses base10 so pretty much manufacturers of storage media are a bunch of efing liars and they only do it to make their products seem bigger than they are.... anyone can tell you a PC or a Mac no matter what file system is used Fat/ntfs/ext....etc etc uses base2 because thats what PC's ( generalized ) use it's either 1 or 0 it's most certainly never 5 or 7 or 4 or 9 etc etc ...

DVD5 and DVD9 are in GB (4.65 GiB and 8.38 GiB, respecitively)
HDDs are sold as GB
SSDs are sold as GB
Flash are sold as GB

The only thing in computers sold as GiB is RAM because the memory architecture demands it.

Microsoft labels everything as GB (10^9) even they are calculating for GiB (2^30). Seagate got sued for Microsoft's mislabeling of units. Now everything that is sold according to GB has little "1 GB = 1 billion bytes" labels on them.

actually it's 2^10 bytes = 1024MB or 1GB

1024 MB = 1024 bytes * 1,000,000 (10^6) = 1,024,000,000 bytes = 1.024 GB or 0.954 GiB
1024 MiB = 1024 bytes * 1,048,576 (2^20) = 1,073,741,824 bytes = 1 GiB

 

[cheesy999]

DVD5 and 9 are in GB
HDDs are sold as GB
SSDs are sold as GB
Flash are sold as GB

The only thing in computers sold as GiB is RAM because the memory architecture demands it.

Microsoft labels everything as GB (10^9) even they are calculating for GiB (2^30). Seagate got sued for Microsoft's mislabeling of units. Now everything that is sold according to GB has little "1 GB = 1 billion bytes" labels on them.

thats mainly because the acronym GIB came a long time after windows, when hard drive users first started using si prefixes, and microsoft haven't bothered changing it
i prefer GIB to be fair, I mean, binary is what the rest of the system is measured in (well except hz)

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Yes, but Microsoft hasn't adapted the correct labels. There's absolutely no reason they shouldn't. Microsoft should be getting sued for mislabeling everything instead of manufactuers that were always doing everything the same way. Most Linux distros have already switched over to using GB and GiB where appropriate.

I have no preference as long as it is correct. GiB only makes sense for RAM and bus bandwidth though because, as I said, their architecture demands it. HDDs, SSDs, etc. they should use what is most appropriate. If they engineered a hard drive to have 75 GiB, they should use 75 GiB. If they engineered it to have 75 GB, they should use 75 GB.

 

[cheesy999]

Yes, but Microsoft hasn't adapted the correct labels. There's absolutely no reason they shouldn't. Microsoft should be getting sued for mislabeling everything instead of manufactuers that were always doing everything the same way. Most Linux distros have already switched over to using GB and GiB where appropriate.

I have no preference as long as it is correct. GiB only makes sense for RAM and bus bandwidth though because, as I said, their architecture demands it. HDDs, SSDs, etc. they should use what is most appropriate. If they engineered a hard drive to have 75 GiB, they should use 75 GiB. If they engineered it to have 75 GB, they should use 75 GB.

it dosn't matter what the hard drive is mesured in, they could make up a measurement and it wouldn't change the amount of free space you have left, remember programs measure space requirements off what windows says so changing the nmber would be a bit confusing

 

[Fourstaff]

For people who cant be bothered. Source: xkcd

 

[Shou Miko]

hehe somebody forgot that 1GB is 1024mb and there is goes xD

 

[francis511]

Kelly-bootle ROFLmao

 

[silkstone]

Source for this wisdom?

http://optics.csufresno.edu/~kriehn/fedora/fedora_files/f14/installation/partitions.html

To the power of 3, is usually noted as Kilo, power 6 = mega, power 9 = giga.
SI units for gigabyte, etc are 1,000MB and so on. It doesn't really make much difference, but using base 10 for storage seems a little more logical to me.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

SI is base 10, IEC is base 2.

However, stating that 1024 MB is equal to 1 GB is a misconception, because a "true" gigabyte would be 2^9 bytes — only be 512 MB in size. But convention states that 1024 MB = 1.0 GB.

That statement on the link makes absolutely no sense. Yes 2^9 is 512 but how is that relevant to anything? Also, 1024 MB is not equal to 1.0 GB (without rounding) as I demonstrated on an earlier post.

 

[HinkyDink]

Thanks for the help guys.