Vanishing Space

Whenever I open My computerand check the diskC used space it tells me 2.43Gb but if unhide files and select all and right click on properties it tells me 1.85GB WHY THIS DISCREPENCY. the situation is the same on my other partition but differences are 150 MB or so. What do I do?

 

Depending on the file system you are using (FAT32 is worse than NTFS and especially with larger drives) the Hard Disk will be set up for certain size "clusters ". Can be from 2K to much larger per cluster. NTFS always uses 4Kb regardless of drive/partition size. FAT32 can range from 2Kb (with a really small partition) to as much as 32Kb.

If any part of a cluster is occupied by data, your system will consider the entire cluster full. So, it is possible to have a 32Kb cluster full with only 1Kb of data really in it.

With large files the loss is minimal. With lots of small files, you can easily lose 15-25 percent of your disk space to this.