Why does my Mac report my external SSD storage differently from my PC?

[harrisonjr98]

Made the jump to an M1 Mini from an aging windows PC for my daily driver, and this caught my eye when I plugged in my external SSD that I use to store my music collection.

On my PC, it says I have 170 GB free of 465 GB total storage - 48,434 total files. 290 GB total usage on disk.
On my new Mac, it says I have 182.73 GB free of 500.09 GB total storage - 51,922 total files, 317.36 GB total on disk.

So what's with the discrepancy? I'm not very well versed in the more technical side of why either OS might read the available storage differently, and would love to know, but I'm more interested in the difference in reporting total file count, usage and free space - the Mac reports more files, despite also reporting more free space!

Drive is a Samsung T5 500GB formatted as exFAT for easier cross-compatibility between my machines, if that could help explain anything. Highly curious, and only mildly concerned as a data nerd who always likes knowing exactly how much I have and where.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

[DimaVR]

Cause Max is reads all the files and even hidden crap windows hides files and doesn’t read all of them

I seen that before doesn’t bother me at all seems to work just fine

 

[gilby101]

GB on a Mac disk are power of 10: 10^9. 1GByte = 1,000,000,000 Bytes.
GB on a Windows disk are power of 2: 2^30. 1GByte = 1024*1024*1024 Bytes. [1024 is 2^10]

So conversion of 500 GB (Mac) is: 500,000,000,000/(1024*1024*1024) = 465 GB (Windows).

There is no consistency. For example, RAM is power of 2 GB on both Windows and Mac. Disk manufacturers have always preferred power of 10 (make the disk look bigger).

Power of 2 measures often use Gi, Mi, etc. to avoid confusion. Say, for example "Gibibyte".
See: Wikipedia Gigabyte)

 

[harrisonjr98]

GB on a Mac disk are power of 10: 10^9. 1GByte = 1,000,000,000 Bytes.
GB on a Windows disk are power of 2: 2^30. 1GByte = 1024*1024*1024 Bytes. [1024 is 2^10]

So conversion of 500 GB (Mac) is: 500,000,000,000/(1024*1024*1024) = 465 GB (Windows).

There is no consistency. For example, RAM is power of 2 GB on both Windows and Mac. Disk manufacturers have always preferred power of 10 (make the disk look bigger).

Power of 2 measures often use Gi, Mi, etc. to avoid confusion. Say, for example "Gibibyte".
See: Wikipedia Gigabyte)

Yeah, that all makes sense - thanks for the explanation!

As for the file count discrepancy, it dawned on me that macOS likely reports both files + folders as "files" in the count, whereas Windows gives discrete counts for files vs folders within the directory you're getting info about.

Windows reports 48,434 files and 3,836 folders on the drive, totaling 52,270 - so, the combined amount is actually a decent chunk more than the 51,922 figure that the Mac is spitting out. Hmm...

 

[gilby101]

Windows reports 48,434 files and 3,836 folders on the drive, totaling 52,270 - so, the combined amount is actually a decent chunk more than the 51,922 figure that the Mac is spitting out. Hmm...

Notice that Finder talks about the number of Items in a Folder, not Files. Certainly includes Folders. Hidden files?

Your 52270 to 51922 is close.

 

[biffuz]

Windows reports 48,434 files and 3,836 folders on the drive, totaling 52,270 - so, the combined amount is actually a decent chunk more than the 51,922 figure that the Mac is spitting out. Hmm...

Finder doesn't count the hidden dot files, i.e. the ones whose name begins with a dot, like its own ".DS_Store" files it puts everywhere...

 

[harrisonjr98]

Notice that Finder talks about the number of Items in a Folder, not Files. Certainly includes Folders. Hidden files?

Your 52270 to 51922 is close.

Yeah, it's close enough to where I'm comfortable assuming that hidden files of some sort are explaining the delta.