Windows 7 – Why is the Reported Size of a Directory Inaccurate?

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What you see below is two directories. The first, on the left, is the the original directory I was zipping up with 7-zip. It is reported as 4.26GB. On the right, we have how large the zip file came out to be after zipping it.

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Why is there such a disparity between the two? There's a big difference between 4.26 GB and 91 GB …

Best Answer

You probably got the picture on the left with lower privileges (non-Admin), while archived with Admin privileges.

Other, less likely explanations include:

  • Users were changed between the time left and right pictures were taken
  • Left picture was taken before size counting was complete
  • Users may have an item linked/bound to some external storage location (some directory outside the Users, or maybe even WebDAV location), which was not available when the left picture was taken.
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