[TriLUG] Disk space calculations in Linux

[Alan Porter]

> If you haven't changed anything, your filesystem is likely set to
> allocate blocks in 4k chunks.  So, if you have a lot of small files, you
> lose whatever the difference is ( 4k - size(file) ) per file.

This applies to large files as well.  If the file is 40000k plus 1 byte,
the file uses 10000 x 4k full blocks, plus one block that contains only
1 byte.

So basically, the last block of most files will be a partially-used block.

There is similar fragmentation (not sure if that's the right word in this
case) in the inodes as well, but that is a little harder to notice.

Alan



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