Discrepancy: DOS Dir and Windows C: Properties

[John L.]

The computerhope info on the DOS dir command leads to the following question:

DIR C:\*.* /s

indicates 3.92 billion bytes space used, whereas

Windows Local Disk(C:) Properties

indicates 4.54 billion bytes used.

I can account for a very small part of the discrepancy via DIR C:\*.* /s /a:shr (110 thousand bytes), but the rest of the difference is a mystery. Any ideas?

P. S. The free space reported by both methods is the same.

[2k dummy]

On used space, Windows reports overhead, whereas DOS does not. The free space would be same, as there is no overhead in free space. To better illustrate overhead, use windows explorer to find a small file - 1 or 2K. Right click and select properties. You will see that the file size and the space used is different. Subtract the actual file size from the space used and you get the amount of overhead for that file.