Why do Finder and du report different file size?

Posted by flipdoubt on Super User See other posts from Super User or by flipdoubt
Published on 2010-03-28T15:01:20Z Indexed on 2010/03/28 15:03 UTC
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I am writing a geektool 3 script to show the size of a particular VMware Fusion virtual machine. Get Info in Finder says the file is "52.91 GB". I run the following du command to get the file size:

> du -hs ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/MY-PRECIOUS-7.vmwarevm | awk '{print $1}'

This du -hs command returns the file size as "49G". What accounts for the difference from what Finder reports?

Alternatively, I have tried replacing the -s option with the -d option like so:

du -hd ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/MY-PRECIOUS-7.vmwarevm | awk '{print $1}'

This du -hd command returns the file size as "59G". What accounts for the difference between Finder, du -hd, and du -hs?

Also, this du -hd command produces no output in geektool 3. What gives?

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