Why huge pic folder got 3 GB huger when moved from Windows to Mac

I moved a 32.6 GB folder of mostly jpegs from Windows to Mac via a 64 GB Cruzer. I've tried opening some of the jpegs. They all opened. Everything appears to be in order. Besides jpegs, the folder contains some legacy Photoshop files which I hope to open via Affinity Photo. ( I gave up my PS CS6 because a Mac update killed it.) The 32.6 GB folder on the PC contained 9012 files and 237 folders, including subfolders and sub-subs. On the Cruzer, same count. Mac Info says only that the folder on Mac has 9250 "items." This makes perfect sense if items are files plus folders (9012 + 237 = 9249) plus maybe 1 invisible Digital ET (9249 + 1 = 9250). Here's the part I have major trouble with: The size of the 32.6 GB (on PC and Cruzer) folder is 35.51 GB on the Mac. That's a gain of almost 3 GB. A lot! Can it be explained by the Mac's generation of invisible (on Mac anyway) .DS_Store files, plus the retention of the newly visible though no longer functional Windows thumbs.db files? Or is it the weight of the invisible Digital ET? Ok, no, but one of you might have given that answer at this point if I hadn't beat you to it, and I am hoping for a more plausible answer--so, do you have one? Thank you for your time, smarts, and knowledge.

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 12, 2020 11:22 PM

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4 replies

Nov 13, 2020 7:46 PM in response to Becausewhat

Say a file uses 1001 bytes, and block size is 1000 bytes. You can't write to partial blocks, so that file would occupy 2 blocks on disk, wasting 999 bytes of storage space. If the Windows block size was 1024 bytes, it would only use a single block and waste only 23 bytes of storage.

I don't know if this would explain the disparity, and it isn't a simple formula translation as it has to do with individual file size as compared to the block size.


I don't imagine you would see GB of difference, though. More like megabytes.


There is also the difference between GB and GiB. 32.6 GiB is about 35 GB.

I didn't think of it until now, and wasn't aware Windows was still incorrectly reporting sizes. Apple switched to the ISO prefix sizes (kilo = 1000, not 1024) a while ago.

Nov 13, 2020 3:08 PM in response to Becausewhat

What is the block size on the drives?

The block size is the minimum file size for a file to occupy on disk. If the block size is different on the Mac than on the PC, then the files might take up more space.


The .DS_Store file is only created if you open the folder in Finder.

Spotlight will also index the drive, but I don’t think it would take up 10% of the used space.



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Why huge pic folder got 3 GB huger when moved from Windows to Mac

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