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I have a SSD with a capacity of 447 GiB. There are 319GiB used for files visible in Windows Explorer. The used space of the partition is reported by Windows as 393 GiB. This drive is only used for games, it has never contained an OS.

Running chkdsk it reports that

468718591 KB total disk space

415493328 KB in 64379 files

I am running a new instance of Windows 10 Pro with no changes to any default settings. The SSD was used with previous installations of Windows so I suspect that there are old system files which my current Windows instance won't show me.

The files take up 314 GiB but 393 GiB have been used. What could be taking up 74 GiB of space which isn't visible in Windows Explorer on a new vanilla Windows installation?

EDIT 1:

The disk contains a single partition which is 447 GiB as reported by Disk Management in Windows.

It appears that the partition is allocated the right amount, and that the free space Windows Explorer reports matches what chkdsk reports. The 15% discrepancy is between the size of visible files in Windows Explorer and size of files reported by chkdsk.

EDIT 2:

The space used by the visible files in Windows Explorer is 343,374,991,368 bytes. The space used by all files as calculated in chkdsk and the drive properties in Windows is 423,015,841,792 bytes. A difference of approximately equal to 73 GiB. The missing 73 GiB is not counting in 1000 vs 1024 as it is present when counting only in bytes.

EDIT 3:

Within the partition was a set of old system files from a previous installation of Windows. When viewed through Explorer they had a size of 0 B but Tree Size Free revealed had large file size.

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Flash_Steel
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1 Answers1

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You will be able to view every single directory and file if you select both "show hidden files" and "show hidden system files" in Folder Options, as shown in the following image. These two settings are both set to "don't show" by default on a vanilla Windows installation (at least since Windows XP).

dialog

It's likely there are hidden system files (with attribute S) in the partition, like Page File or whatever other programs have made hidden. Also, take into account that the Recycle Bin is hidden by default $RECYCLE.BIN.

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