Did something change with windows file & folder size reporting???

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sram

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 30, 2007
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Hi guys,

I don't know if anybody have seen something like this, but this is driving me nuts. I noticed this only with windows 10 boxes, hence the question in the title. Sometimes when I copy large folders from location A to location B, the size in the new location will be noticeably different. You know, it is just natural to check the size of the copied folder to make sure everything was copied successfully. But NO, that's not the case with me!!! You copy folder1 from drive Z to drive Y, and the resulting folder1 in drive Y will be less in size although windows claimed the copy operation completed successfully. It is annoying because sometimes you want to copy files from a USB drive of a friend and you want to make sure you got all the files before returning it but you obviously can't because of this weird issue. The file system is the same, and the allocation unit size should be the same as well. So why? If I go over the files manually, things seems fine and everything is there but I can't possibly check for each and every file because of the hugs number of both files and sub-folders.

Two days ago this happened: I got a flash with 3 GB of data, copied it to my machine successfully (as per windows) but the copied parent folder is only 2.2 GB of data. I copied to a network drive and then to a local drive and got the same result. All drives formatted as NTFS. I even used file copying tools like richcopy and also got the same result.

What gives?

I think the files are there but something is wrong with size reporting because I remember one time I went inside the parent folder, selected all sub-folders (control + A) and clicked properties and got the size I was expecting. Why is that? Did somebody notice something like this?

I appreciate all input and sorry for the bad writing...I did this real quick
 
Do you have compression enabled on your drive? I rarely copy files from external sources but have not noticed a size change in win10
 
If going from a small to large hard drive block sizes can be different (large drives have larger block sizes). If a small file can fit inside a block size it's going to self-report its size larger than it really is.

If you're really worried about it, make sure you have the same number of files copied and do a random hash sum on source/destination files (especially important ones) so that you know the contents are valid.
 
Cluster size

all files use a hole number of cluster at at time if you are copying tons of small files the cluster waist might have a huge impact on space occpuide on the drive
however the file size should still be the same


when you check a folder
Size: the size of the data in all the files ( this should be the same)
Size on disk: how much space its take on the current disk its on ( this can vary dependong on cluster size and ntfs compression)
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this important detail (your posts reminded me) : The file and folder numbers are actually different...This means not all files are copied of course. Now I remember! That's why I was annoyed and was trying to figure out how to properly do something extremely basic in windows (file copying) or simple copy & paste. I also thought it could be that some files were hidden and so they will not get copied but NO, that wasn't the case also.
 
SvenBent said:
Cluster size

all files use a hole number of cluster at at time if you are copying tons of small files the cluster waist might have a huge impact on space occpuide on the drive
however the file size should still be the same


when you check a folder
Size: the size of the data in all the files ( this should be the same)
Size on disk: how much space its take on the current disk its on ( this can vary dependong on cluster size and ntfs compression)
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yeah I know about the size vs size on disk. Both were different, I remember clearly now.

Anyways, I tried to copy the flash drive into a laptop with also windows 10, and it worked. Same size reported! And I still don't know what's different with this laptop from my main windows 10 box you see in my sig. I still have the flash drive and I'll try to reproduce the problem and probably show you a video. I'm not leaving this before I figure out what really is going on.
 
Use this robocopy script on the source then destination.

robocopy "source" NULL /L /S /NJH /BYTES /FP /NC /NDL /XJ /TS /R:0 /W:0

It will give you a file and size count without moving anything.

I have also noticed Windows 10 Explorer not reporting large dir sizes properly, so I go to the above counter script.

As far as mass copying goes, just use robocopy.
 
There is apparently a problem, and I'm not alone. It seems like it happened with one of those windows 10 updates...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...r/933ade81-55e1-4cd5-a4b1-614044fab64e?auth=1

https://community.spiceworks.com/to...t-showing-correct-folder-size-and-file-counts

https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-file-size-incorrect/

It is annoying as hell. A quick solution may be to rely on a third party software for copying and size reporting as somebody suggested here until windows 10 behaves itself again.
 
I've used a tool called windirstat to analyze usage space. Just make sure that you run it as administrator, or it won't find stuff that's marked as hidden.
 
You're not using Microsoft's new 'One Drive' cloud based storage feature users are being tricked into using at install time are you? It's a massive PITA as you can't just back up user profiles anymore and reinstall Windows as you have no idea just what aspects of the users files are stored 'in the cloud' and what aspects are on the local machine as Windows apparently 'optimizes storage' - Like Apple and iCloud under MacOS.
 
Mazzspeed said:
You're not using Microsoft's new 'One Drive' cloud based storage feature users are being tricked into using at install time are you? It's a massive PITA as you can't just back up user profiles anymore and reinstall Windows as you have no idea just what aspects of the users files are stored 'in the cloud' and what aspects are on the local machine as Windows apparently 'optimizes storage' - Like Apple and iCloud under MacOS.
Click to expand...

No I'm not. It is great that you mentioned it so that I don't fall for it somehow. Thanks.
 
Okay, here is a little video to show incorrect file size reporting in action:

NDFCNdY.mp4


This is my dell xps 13 laptop with windows 10. You will see that I get 3 different sizes for one folder (Seagate Slim Drive). There is a size when hover over it by using the mouse, a different size when I select properties for the same folder, and lastly a third different size when I select all contents and select properties ! And it is not like the size difference is only marginal, It is actually so big it will leave you puzzled and not knowing if you actually copied what you really wanted to copy.


So you want to copy some work files from a friend using a flash drive. He gives it to you and next morning he asks: You copied the files?

Me: No
Him: What? you don't know how to?
Me: Well, I actually did copy them but...
Him: But what?
Me: I'm not sure if they were copied correctly
Him: Come on man, it is just a simple copy and paste.
Me: Yeah, I know. I did that, I swear to God I did it.
Him: So?
Me: I have a feeling not all files were copied it.
Him: That's easy, just go check the size of source and destination. I thought you are good at PC's.
Me: That's what I did and it gave me a lower size for the destination.
Him: Small differences in size can be attributed to different reasons like cluster size and such.
Me: I know that but I'm talking about gigabytes of difference...
Him: !!!?

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
 
My issue sort of dovetails with the OP's and who knows what else I'm going to uncover as I go along but for now:

I'm noticing after 1903 that my folders are all set to read only even though I can manually delete and effect things within. People have had this quirk even before 1903 but in any event: Help? I verified that yes I am indeed logged in as the Administrator and that's the only account on this machine anyways.

http://www.howtoedge.com/restore-read-only-folders-after-windows-10-update/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ead-only/fabf4d26-972a-4881-9f0e-38f788fe1f43

So far functionality does NOT seem to be affected. Yet. Not sure what to make of it.
 
Last edited:
sram said:
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Click to expand...



Again, stop using the GUI, its doesn't work right.

robocopy "source" NULL /L /S /NJH /BYTES /FP /NC /NDL /XJ /TS /R:0 /W:0
 
Q-BZ said:
My issue sort of dovetails with the OP's and who knows what else I'm going to uncover as I go along but for now:

I'm noticing after 1903 that my folders are all set to read only even though I can manually delete and effect things within. People have had this quirk even before 1903 but in any event: Help? I verified that yes I am indeed logged in as the Administrator and that's the only account on this machine anyways.

http://www.howtoedge.com/restore-read-only-folders-after-windows-10-update/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ead-only/fabf4d26-972a-4881-9f0e-38f788fe1f43

So far functionality does NOT seem to be affected. Yet. Not sure what to make of it.
Click to expand...

Were you able to confirm that all files will actually be copied despite the incorrect folder size? You said functionality doesn't seem to be affected....
 
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schizrade said:
Again, stop using the GUI, its doesn't work right.

robocopy "source" NULL /L /S /NJH /BYTES /FP /NC /NDL /XJ /TS /R:0 /W:0
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, your script is amazing. I actually used it and it seemed like sizes match except for few scenarios (I'll explain later when I confirm it. I think it has to do with hidden files). But you know, the point of this thread is to ask why the windows GUI itself is not reporting the correct folder size. I mean, I haven't really seen this before and I'm a windows user since 1997. I want my windows GUI to just work. M$ need to fix this. For more exact numbers and more details, one will use specialized command line tools or dedicated scripts. It must be one of those windows 10 updates that messed it up. To compare, I accessed share drives inside my windows 10 machine from a windows 8 machine, and it reported the correct folder size. So, it is only a windows 10 thingie.

Thanks.
 
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sram said:
Were you able to confirm that all files will actually be copied despite the incorrect folder size? You said functionality doesn't seem to be affected....
Click to expand...

Yes. A bizarre quirk and hopefully nothing past that. (So far.) I did all of the suggested steps to remove the read only status indicator and none of them worked. I have no other signs that would suggest corruption, either, so... (shrugs)
 
Hi again guys.....

Something very related. I'm trying to use the Cinchoo EazyCopy software, which is a very nice GUI for robocopy to copy a shared network drive to another shared network drive but it won't just happen. The software works beautifully. It is only when I select whole letter drives it doesn't work for some reason. But I know that it should work. The good old robocopy can do it since you can just type:

robocopy source: destination: /copyall or something of this sort and it will just start copying. For some reason this gui doesn't see network drives or maybe even drives. If I select folders within them it will work!!!

I made sure to run the program as an admin, but the weird thing that happens when I do this is that share drives will NOT even appear in the drop-down list even though they appeared when I ran the program as a normal user. This is the error it gives me:

5g2sF86.jpg


Note: Z and X are my network shares.

Anybody familiar with this software who can help me? I'm sure there is a little thingie that you can do to let it just work with whole drives.

Thanks.
 
Forgot to mention that MS own solution richcopy does work for this, but it will stop halfway and never continues afterwards. The whole program will just crash and quit. I don't know why. Maybe it just can't take a big load or there is a bug that makes it quit after some time. The data is about 8 TB.
 
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