Hard Drive Capacity Confusion

[TheHiggsBoson]

Hey all,

This is my first time posting here, thanks for reading.

I own a 500 GB WesternDigital Hard Drive on which there are six folders. I am attempting to transfer all six folders onto a new, 3 TB Seagate Hard Drive.

When I choose 'get info' on the 500 GB WD, the information reads:
-Capacity: 500GB
-Used: 449.01 GB on disk

Easy enough. So I merged all 6 folders into a single folder, and transferred that folder onto the 3 TB Seagate. After the folder had completed the transfer, I chose 'get info', expecting to see '449.01 GB'. This was not the case. Instead, the single folder (containing the 6 mentioned) read a total capacity of 154.31 GB.

Confused, I chose 'get info' on each of the individual 6 folders, and cross referenced their individual capacity across both hard drives - and they match.

The file capacities read:
1) 13.13 GB
2) 481 MB
3) 1 MB
4) 139.33 GB
5) 855.4 MB
6) 381.2 MB

The sum of which equals 154.31 GB. So the question remains, why does the WesternDigital drive claim that '449.01 GB' of space is being used? It's very odd. I'm the original owner, and the drive has never held anything else but my photographs.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[chscag]

There may be hidden files or folders on the WD drive that are taking up the additional space. The sum of the folders you moved may have been the same on the WD if you had done a "get info" on each one while they were still located there.