3 different sizes displayed for the same file

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3 different sizes displayed for the same file

I am trying to grasp why I see 3 different file sizes for the same file. (I have restarted the computer.)

If I do a Finder window sort in either Column or Gallery View, the file size shows up correctly (199 KB).

If I do a sort in either Icon or List View, the same file shows up incorrectly (10 KB).

Doing a Get Info on the file shows a file size of 198,733 bytes which makes sense to me, but also displays 262 KB on disk, which I can't figure out. See photo.

Can anyone explain why these differences, and more importantly, how I would get the actual size (199 KB) to display when I sort in List View, because when I have hundreds of photos that I need to work with, having the real file size display is kind of handy.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 14, 2021 10:17 AM

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Answer 1

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a brody

Level 10

83,987 points

Feb 14, 2021 11:03 AM in response to Mr. Spock

Block versus byte size.

It used to be every 8 kilobytes was a block. So it left smaller files filling a whole block, and so the Get Info would round up to the nearest block. This computation has revised with each new file system revision, and come closer to the actual size of the block.

Unfortunately when migrating from one file system to another your actual size filled varies.

And then you have the fact that at least Mac OS X, has built in defrag for 20 MB and smaller files.

This has led to actual purgeable space being different than free space, and create difficulty when upgrading to large operating systems. You need 35 GB of purgeable space for Big Sur.

Mac OS 10.13 brought the newest file system size migration to APFS, and it was automatic for all solid state storage.

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3 different sizes displayed for the same file

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