Space on disk much larger than actual filesizes

[Keith Clark]

On 12-05-17 09:08 PM, Jonathan Marsden wrote:
> Keith,
>
> On Thu, 17 May 2012 Keith Clark<keithclark at k-wbookworm.com>  wrote:
>
>> ... I've noticed that every directory is showing about 8x's more
>> space taken up on the disk than the actual combined filesizes.  One
>> directory has 114 MB on it, but it is taking up 918 MB of space on
>> the disk.
> Which software tools have you used to obtain the two numbers you
> mention?  A specific example would help.  Is there anything unusual
> about this filesystem or how it was created?
>
> In what follows, I am using /path/to/dir to mean "the path to
> the 'One directory' that you are referring to", since you didn't
> actually tell us what it is :)
>
> In a Terminal (LXTerminal) window, at a shell prompt, you can do
>
>    sudo find /path/to/dir -print0 |sudo xargs -0 stat --printf "%b\t%n
> \n" |sort -n
>
> to get a sorted list of all the files concerned (including all hidden
> files) preceeded by their sizes in kiloBytes. If that doesn't reveal
> the cause of the issue to you, please email (or pastebin, and provide
> links in email) the the results of running:
>
>    sudo du -sk /path/to/dir |sort -n
>
> which should list all files or directories at that level and their sizes
> in kiloBytes, and
>
>    stat -f /path/to/dir
>
> and lastly
>
>    df -hk /path/to/dir
>
> This should get us useful info about what files are in the directory,
> their sizes, and info about the filesystem they are being stored on,
> including its block size.
>
> In case the cause is really obscure, maybe also post the output of
>
>    sudo tune2fs -l $(df -h /path/to/dir |grep ^/ |cut -d " " -f1)
>
> which should provide a lot of technical info about the filesystem.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jonathan
It is with the File Manager and selecting Properties that these numbers 
are being reported.  Gparted also confirms that a large amount of space 
has already been consumed.

Every directory shows about 8x's the actual filesizes.

I will review the rest of your reply later in the day as time allows.

Thanks!

Keith