[RESOLVED] USB flash drive capacity
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Thread: [RESOLVED] USB flash drive capacity

  1. #1
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    Resolved [RESOLVED] USB flash drive capacity

    I have copied files of about 13 GB’s onto a new 256 GB capacity usb drive formatted exFAT. When I check the size of the drive in file explorer it shows 49.2 gbs used space. Is this normal? Is there another partition on the drive which I don’t know about?

    I transferred those files to a new usb drive but reformatted it to NFTS. It shows a total capacity of roughly 13 GBS!

    Both drives are SanDisk USB 3.0 drives.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated,

    Brian

  2. #2
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    Sandisk usually puts some utilities on the drives. Did you delete them?

    Did they come pre-formatted with exFAT or did you reformat?

    You can use something like Treesizefree to see exactly what is taking up space on the drive.
    https://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

    BTW, it's NTFS, not NFTS.

  3. #3
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    They both came pre-formated with exFAT but I reformated the 64 GB usb flash drive and no doubt deleted some of the utilities on it.
    That would explain why that is smaller.
    BTW the grelims got in my query, I meant to write NTFS.
    Thanks for the heads up and the answer.

    Brian

  4. #4
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    I checked the tree size on the 256 gb flash drive which I did not reformat with the Treesize Free software. Why does my sandisk 256 gb drive show a total of 49 gbs when I click on Properties fom file explorer while I only copied 13 gbs to i?.

  5. #5
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    Did you expand Treesizefree? It should break down the files' sizes.

    Did you only use the drives on one computer?

    Did you show hidden files in File Explorer?

  6. #6
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    I did expand the TreesizeFree on the 256 gb flash drive and it showed the 13 gbs only.

    I originally used that drive on another PC with windows 10 and copied the files from them (13 gbs). I then copied those files directly to another flash drive (64 gbs capacity) using another windows 10 PC.

  7. #7
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    That's strange. Treesizefree should also show the hidden items as well. It might be helpful if you could post some screenshots.

    Another app you can try is Disktective.
    http://www.disktective.com/

    Sorry, I'm heading out for a while, but maybe someone else can chime in.

  8. #8
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    attached are 2 views of the 256 gb flash drive which is formatted FAT. One shows the properties of the drive and the other shows the tree






    Properties of (G).JPGLevel 1 tree of (G).JPG

  9. #9
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    FAT32 and exFAT are very different.
    https://www.howtogeek.com/235596/wha...xfat-and-ntfs/

    At 256GB, I think the cluster size for FAT32 is 64K. So every file takes a minimum of 64k on the drive.That's a lot of wasted space, so that maybe be why the drive appears to be so full. Size of the actual files vs. size on disk.

    On NTFS, it would be 4K clusters, so there is way less wasted space. I think the default for exFAT would be 32K for a 256GB drive.

    In any case, I'd recommend reformatting the drive in either exFAT or NTFS. FAT32 has a max file size limit of around 4GB, so that's another issue.

  10. #10
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    Hi Midknyte,

    I have now reformatted the other drive in NTFS and everything is fine now. Thanks very much for your help and info on the different formats. Good to know!

    Regards,

    Brian

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