Why sizes are different, and what do they mean?

Posted by Ramy on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Ramy
Published on 2012-12-05T03:57:51Z Indexed on 2012/12/05 5:10 UTC
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hard-drive

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partitioning

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filesystems

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external-hard-drive

I have a 1 TB hard drive that consists of one NTFS partition which I use to back up my data (no operating system). The size of all the data in it is : 726 GB, size on disk: 728 GB, and the used space when I check the properties is: 731 GB. There's a 5 GB difference between the size and the used space.

Why is that huge difference there?

What's the difference between these sizes? (size, size on disk, and used space)

Is there a way to calculate the difference, and be sure the HDD is not messing around?

Is that normal?

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