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Okay, so, my new gaming laptop arrives in something like 5 hours. I need to transfer like 65-ish gigs of stuff over to it from this old hunk of junk. I copied them to a 'transfer folder', which basically is just all of my files in one place so I can copy-paste that over to a flash drive to put on my new laptop. I wanted to check to make sure I had everything, so I looked at the properties of each file I copied. It says they all have the same size, but that some of them have lower size-on-disks of as much as 26,000 bytes. I don't want any technical jargon, I just want to know if I've lost any actual stuff out of this or if it's just due to being in a different location on my pc, and if this will cause issues with moving things over to the new one. I've seen stuff talking about clusters and such, and despite being the most technologically proficient member of my family, I still don't have a bloody clue what half of that means. So please spare me that torture.

Any help would be appreciated, especially if it happens before my new setup gets here - I'll be having to wait a few hours after my laptop arrives for Amazon to deliver some accessories for it, so it could still be another 12 hours.

Kind regards, Ash.

Ash
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    Does this answer your question? [What is the difference between “Size” and “Size on disk?”](https://superuser.com/questions/66825/what-is-the-difference-between-size-and-size-on-disk) – Kamil Maciorowski Sep 03 '20 at 05:41
  • Goes way over my head, dude. – Ash Sep 03 '20 at 05:43
  • Even the ["gas can" analogy](https://superuser.com/a/66828/432690)? – Kamil Maciorowski Sep 03 '20 at 05:48
  • Even that. I still can't tell, based on that, if I've lost anything with the size on disk being different. The properties thing tells me there's the same number of files, but I'm no wizkid at this so I can't be sure on my own if anything's gone from them. – Ash Sep 03 '20 at 05:51
  • It's not a refusal, dude, and I'm really good with maths 90% of the time. It's just a lack of understanding. The gas can analogy baffled me further. To be blunt, I think part of this is simply my brain not clicking onto things the way yours is- i have autism, which is likely the cause. What I got out of said analogy was that my PC would still consider the second unit/can full even if it was only filling up a fifth of space. – Ash Sep 03 '20 at 06:00
  • The *only* question you asked is "should I be worried [because size on disk differs]?" (in the title). Well, if the destination filesystem uses "gas cans" of different size than "cans" used by the source filesystem, then different "size on disk" values are normal. This alone is not a reason to be worried; corresponding files may still be identical. On the other hand identical size alone does not mean they are identical for sure. From your comment it seems the real problem is rather "I need to verify the copy". "How to verify a copy?" is a *different* question then the one you asked. – Kamil Maciorowski Sep 03 '20 at 06:06
  • Sorry about all this, gentlemen, as previously mentioned, I have autism so I don't click onto things the same way/as quickly. With the gas can analogy, is it trying to say that although only 12 gallons are used, it's still taking up 2 cans' worth of storage - and then that different parts of your PC may store each 'gallon' in a different sized 'container'? – Ash Sep 03 '20 at 06:59
  • Files in windows can get fragmented and take up more space than when they are contiguous on the disk. It is hard to wrap your head around Windows file system and how they relate to disk storage and formatting of the disk – Moab Sep 03 '20 at 08:23
  • @ash regarding your last comment: "yes" that is the proper way to look at it. – Yorik Sep 09 '20 at 17:35

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If you're worried, you should be looking at "size" alone, not "size on disk", since that can vary. If the sizes are the same (and you can also check if number of folders/files are the same), you haven't lost any data.

GChuf
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