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I am on Windows 10 and have a ~640GB (base 10) Hard drive with 2 main partitions on it C:\ and D:\ and also a recovery and system partition as can be seen here

[diskmanager][1].

When I use cmd to determine the size of all files on C:\ (including hidden and operating system protected files) I get this

enter image description here

I use the command dir /a/s, on C:\ as can be seen.

But when I select all files and folders in C:\ including hidden and operating system protected files and folders, I get this result size:79.717.573.909 bytes. As you can see there is a big discrepancy between the two.

I figure that there must be some files and folders that I didn't select and witch are compressed and thus have a bigger actual size then their footprint on the disk (size on disk), since, as you can see, disk-manager gives me a lesser capacity for C: partition then what cmd says. If someone could explain whats going on here I would be greatfull?

I hope I've been clear enough,

DavidPostill
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adoion
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  • You cannot simply right click on the system drive and select properties. You have basically done that just with the command prompt commands, the reason you cannot do that is because, Windows uses symbolic links for its system files, doing what you have done incorrectly reports your disk usage. Windows Explroer reports the correct free and used space though. There are third-party programs you can use to determine where your disk space has gone. – Ramhound Oct 19 '15 at 11:28

1 Answers1

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Are you right clicking on Command Prompt and choosing to run it as Administrator? If not, I bet you're missing some shadow files.

certain types of files don’t appear in Windows Explorer. Files in Windows’ aptly named “shadow storage,” also known as “shadow copies,” don’t appear here. The shadow storage contains System Restore points and previous versions of files for the Previous Versions feature in Windows Explorer. Source

DustinRS
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  • I tried that right now and now i get 94.508.220.432 bytes in cmd. Whats going on here?? – adoion Oct 18 '15 at 20:37
  • Most likely the size of these shadow files as well as your pagefile and potentially other system files have changed. Depending on what else you're doing on the system, more temp files may have been created. All of these will likely increase in size as you're using more applications, so this particular increase seems natural to me. Try rebooting and running both the drive properties from Windows Explorer by right clicking the drive and start the `dir /a /s` at the same time. (Also, after rebooting let the computer sit for a minute or two to load everything and don't launch any other apps.) – DustinRS Oct 18 '15 at 20:44
  • But all these files you mentioned are select-able so they should have been included in my selection and i don't have shadow files enabled. – adoion Oct 18 '15 at 20:46
  • You disabled the Volume Shadow Copy service? How recently? Maybe there are still some leftover shadow files. Also, there are folders like `C:\System Volume Information` that Windows Explorer (even as admin) cannot open without manually modifying permissions, so perhaps it is missing those. – DustinRS Oct 18 '15 at 20:55