Win 10/ File Size/ Read-Error?

[Pezzy]

Hi all.

I don't think I've seen this on previous versions of Windows; this might be a unique glitch to Windows 10?

First, I want to show you a screen-capture pic of my storage: My "C" drive (I also have a "D" drive, a separate SATA HDD); my "C" drive is a Samsung SSD. As you'll see, it has 171GB free out of 232GB:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll217/PezzyDude/ThisPC_zpscwyvqazc.jpg

Roughly a little over 60GB of space taken up with the Win 10 installation and the various programs I've installed since.

So, I was clicking around, and I clicked on Start/ Settings/ System/ Apps & Features; the Default seems to be that it will Sort them by Size; look at this partial screen-capture pic:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll217/PezzyDude/Apps-Features_zpsg70zkqwm.jpg

At the top of the list, you see that first program? Calibre? Perhaps some of you are familiar with it; you can use it to organize, convert, and read e-books. But do you see the red arrow pointing at its supposed size? 89.5GB?? Uhhhh....no.

Calibre is a relatively small program after installed; I checked its installation folder over in Program Files (x86), and it's 169MB....megabytes....not even one Gigabyte.

Do you see the other red arrows? GiPo MoveOnBoot? Realtek High Definition Audio? Adobe Acrobat Reader DC? None of those sizes are accurate. The only one that is accurate in that picture is the one that does not have a red arrow: Harvester by Good Old Games (GOG) is about 1.5GB installed.

I even went to the Control Panel/ Programs & Features and checked there to see if it was reporting the same; yup. Here's a partial screen-capture pic:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll217/PezzyDude/Programs-Features_zpscjlsdhtd.jpg

And ya know, especially that GiPo MoveOnBoot program; that little program isn't even one megabyte; it's 612KB!!

I mean, that first pic shows that I have 171GB free out of 232GB. Let's say - according to what's being reported - that I uninstalled the e-book program of Calibre; that would give me back over 89GB. You know what 171 + 89 is? 260GB. My total size of my SSD for the "C" drive is only 232GB.

I've rebooted by computer since discovering this "size" discrepancy-read the other day, thinking it was a fluke and would correct itself after a reboot. Nope.

What's going on? Any ideas?

Thanks for any input,
Pez

 

[carnageX]

I'd say it's probably just a weird glitch on your install. The Apps & Features screen is correct on both of my Win10 installs.

Did you do a fresh install of Win10 after you did the upgrade, or did you just leave it with the upgrade?

 

[Pezzy]

I thought it was a weird glitch at first, too. But I've done more than one reboot since discovering it, thinking it would go away; nope.

I had originally done the in-place upgrade. But then I did a fresh install. I deleted the partitions on my SSD and installed Win 10 from scratch using a USB drive, so it's not like I installed Windows 10 over top of an existing, previous installation; I did not get the Windows.old folder.
Pez

 

[carnageX]

Could try running this from command prompt:

sfc /scannow


Sent from my HTC One

 

[Pezzy]

Hi; thanks for the suggestion.

I ran sfc /scannow; it came back with the result: "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

Think this is something I should contact Microsoft about? Tech support? Will there be a charge $?

Or, can you recommend a good Windows message forum?
Pez

 

[iPwn]

sfc is the System File Checker. This will attempt to restore files that do not pass a hash match assuming they've been damaged, but does very little regarding size.

So first, how the hell is this program 90GB???
Well the obvious answer there is that it is not. The simple math you've demonstrated is clear proof. So does that mean your install is cheesed? I doubt it.

My guess is that what is being reported is (obviously) not accurate to the local install, but could very well represent an actual reading. Reading from where though?

If you've ever used source code control software (e.g. TortoiseSVN), you may just run into a very rare issue where you have a program with a total size of > 10MB, but the code repository is almost a terabyte in size. I can't explain exactly WHY this happens, but it has something to do with an error when the log files are trying to synchronize and just growing instead of marrying up somewhere.

Considering (What little I know of) the structure of Windows 10, I would imagine their metro app system uses something similar. You know your files and settings are being synced between locations/account/etc, it would only seem reasonable that much more than that is as well.

I would simply assume the size you're seeing is probably the result of some failed source code/app settings/etc sync process. For whatever reason, you're seeing the size on the server, not your local machine.

In conclusion, this is entirely speculation so don't take this as fact by any means.

Edit: It may be possible that a folder size is being reported wrong due to bad sector/aged statistics on the drive. You could execute

chkdsk /r/f

which might fix it, might not. Might not be a problem with your PC at all.

 

[carnageX]

^ chkdsk shouldn't be necessary on an SSD. If OP has the applications installed on his data drive (HDD) then it may be useful...but chkdsk won't really do much for an SSD.

I suggested SFC in case there were corrupted system files that from the install that are reporting the size incorrectly.

 

[iPwn]

Learn something new every day.

^ chkdsk shouldn't be necessary on an SSD.

To be honest, I've never heard that before (Thanks!). I started to read up some and found* that this is mostly true. I was not actually aware that the drive's controller cares for bad sectors by itself (although that now makes sense that it would).

I also found that chkdsk is not necessarily "bad" to run on an SSD, as if problems are not found, the read/write counts are not affected, but it's mostly a waste of time, with one exception. A basic scan (with no command arguments) would task it with only checking File System issues, which could be the case here. If the scenario I described before (although unlikely) is the cause, then that program could have at one time consumed the 90GB, but the file system properties are not updated after whatever sync process corrected the actual space consumed (i.e. after it removed the metadata files that consumed that 90GB).

A simple chkdsk with no arguments should cause no wear on your drive and may correct that.

* Source