System & reserved files on a secondary drive?

If I format the same drive with exFAT or FAT32 the used space is much less, but still not a file that you can see.

Hi fg,

I cleaned the drive using DISKPART and ended up with 102MB which are not Windows system files nor will render my PC unusable if the drive isn't connected. 😁

However, when copying back the data from the clone, Windows reports 14GB again.

Something within the data is causing Windows to misreport System & reserved files.

I'll dig deeper and keep you posted. That is all for now.

Thanks to all that participated.

Regards.

Looks to me that the File system itself is included in the System files space.

Copy back a few folders at the time and keep checking to see when those 14GB start showing up in the System files.

Then you can isolate which one is causing the problem. 😎

In your case it shows as System files you only have that one entry after you click on System & reserved, there is no other entry specific for reserved space like we saw when it had Restore points.

Do the System files include reserved space or not? How is that interpreted? 🤣🤣🤷‍♂️

There was a separate entry in the case of system restore points. Wich one is considered reserved space?

If I format the same drive with exFAT or FAT32 the used space is much less, but still not a file that you can see.

Hi fg,

I cleaned the drive using DISKPART and ended up with 102MB which are not Windows system files nor will render my PC unusable if the drive isn't connected. 😁

However, when copying back the data from the clone, Windows reports 14GB again.

Something within the data is causing Windows to misreport System & reserved files.

I'll dig deeper and keep you posted. That is all for now.

Thanks to all that participated.

Regards.

Hi Lugoo and thanks for your reply.

I was made aware earlier by fg2001 of hidden file system space on an empty drive, but that is not the issue. Windows is reporting 14GB of System & reserved files nowhere to be found.

As pointed out by fg2001 "What is considered System & reserved space in that Storage usage page?"

IMHO, Windows system files or Windows reserved files should not be located on a secondary drive unless purposely done by the user.

This may be just semantics for some but confusing none the less, at least for me.

Hi Sibro,

One of the questions we had for a newly formatted NTFS empty drive:

filesystems - Newly formatted (NTFS) external hard drive already has 'Used space'. What determines the used space's amount? Is it correlated to the HD's capacity? - Super User

Also, found this below on another web site.

The Disadvantages of an NTFS File System | Techwalla

High Space Overhead The NTFS file system requires a significant amount of "space overhead" to function. Space overhead is data storage space on a drive that is devoted to the file system itself and therefore cannot be used to store data. In other words, if you format a drive with the NTFS file system, you will lose some of the storage space. According to Microsoft, "space overhead is in the form of NTFS system files that typically use at least 4 MB of drive space on a 100 MB partition." This means that 4 percent or more of your drive space is lost due to the file system's needs. As a result, Microsoft recommends that users avoid working with the NTFS file system on drive volumes that are smaller than 400MB. Attempting to load NTFS on smaller storage devices such as USB flash drive and older hard drives may result in poor performance or inadequate storage space.

If I format the same drive with exFAT or FAT32 the used space is much less, but still not a file that you can see. �🤣🤣🤣

Here is the same empty drive just formatted as FAT32. 96 KB versus the 142 MB of NTFS. 😎