Topic: File sizes

[derek]

Having installed and configured e-smith 4.1 as a local server only I copied a numner of files from Win2K Pro to a shared directory. When I right-clicked (in Win2K) on a file to see its properties the info displayed was:

File Size: 80MB
File Size on disk 650MB

I am showing approximate values. Actual rspective numbers were slightly different. The point, however, is that the difference between reported File Size and File Size on disk were pretty shocking to me. I intended on using e-smith solely as a file server for my home network.

Does anybody know about the problem? Is it really a problem? Or perhaps Win2K somehow erred due to the difference in partition types between Win2K and Linux?

In case it matters, relevant specs of my system:
P150
64RAM - EDO
two WD HDDs 40GB each, ata100
note: the BIOS doesn't auto-recognize the discs but when set manually the system boots and reports proper disk sizes.

Any comments will be appreciated.

[Craig Foster]

Windows believes the file size is based on clusters of 512 KB (524,288 bytes) each. Just so it can understand the whole disk...

Case in point:-
AGSatellite running on server creates file ddatabase.dat of 79872bytes

ls -altF ddatabase.dat -> 79872bytes
du ddatabase.dat -> 84Kbytes
i-bay, right click, properties, size on disk -> 512 KB (524,288 bytes)

It takes up whatever is du (disk usage) tell you it does.

Regards,

Craig Foster