Deleted files still taking up the space!
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I've deleted incomplete downloaded files of torrent with low seeders that took too long time to complete in order to clear some space and make way for other faster downloads. But, after I've deleted these files inside file explorer then proceed to empty up my recycle bin, the available space never change and it still shows that the deleted files taking up the space. When I left clicked the folder, it showed Size is 28GB, but Size on disk is 12GB which means I have deleted 16GB from my HDD, but it still occupying the space. What should I do now to solve this problem?
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Let's first explain a common misconception about Windows and how it handles disk allocation: The size property is logical, it shows the total amount of bytes that the files will take once they are fully downloaded. Size on disk is the actual size they are taking right now. This is the normal behavior, it works like this regardless of whether you're using an HDD or a SSD.
If you are seeing 28GB and 12GB respectively, this means that you have partially downloaded files sitting in your disk. Those files alone are taking 12GB, but when they are fully downloaded, they will take up 28GB.
So no, you have not freed up 16GB, those 16GB are what you are still left to download in order to complete those files you have.
If you had more files in that folder and they were successfully deleted, this means that the folder was once taking more than 12GB on your disk.
To avoid similar problems in the future:
Always stop the torrent before moving or deleting its files:
Regardless of whether a file was fully downloaded or only partially, trying to delete it while the torrent is running might prevent them from being deleted. Incomplete files are locked by the client to prevent them from being deleted or moved before completion, while completed files can be locked if they are being seeded in the moment.The maximum amount of bytes you will recover when deleting a torrent can only be the value reported by Size on Disk:
Some torrent clients will pre-allocate all the torrent size, so you will see Size on disk: 28GB even before you have downloaded a single byte from that torrent. This is optional, most clients allocate bytes as they are downloaded.Without pre-allocation, if you have a 28GB torrent and you only downloaded 5% of it, the size on disk will be 1.4GB. Completely deleting this torrent therefore will only free up 1.4GB.
With pre-allocation enabled, on the other hand, a 28GB torrent will immediately take 28GB of effective size on disk, even without completing any file. In this case, completely deleting the torrent will free all 28GB that it pre-allocated.
And finally, if you stop the torrent in your client's UI, you can go back and delete that folder at last.
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@ianfontinell-0 Thank you for the information. I've been a Windows user for several years and I didn't know this.
Question: Sometimes I've deleted a torrent and its content (using uTorrent 3.5.5), without actually stopping the torrent, if I've looked at some of the content and don't want to download the rest. If the folder (given that it was a multi-file torrent) disappears, can I assume that the extra space has been freed up. If not, is there a way to recover this space?
Thank you again.
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@eobox91103 if the folder is gone, essentially you freed up all the space there is to free, but to be more technical, there might be residual temporary files left, but it wouldn't be practical to track them, and not even worth the effort since those files are usually really small, just a few megabytes most of the time.
those temporary files are created when you partially download, that is, when you leave a few files unchecked, some parts still need to be downloaded and those are stored in special files that might not be in the same directory, so deleting the folder itself not always deletes those files.
to avoid this, when you intend to delete a torrent and all of its files, it is best to do it from the client's interface.
but again, very negligible values for the most part, not worth worrying too much about.
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@ianfontinell-0 Oh no, but how could I recover those 16GB after I've deleted the related files and even emptied up the recycle bin from my hdd? I've done defragmentation on my drive but it isnt working.
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@amelia your brain is tricking you, you think you downloaded 28TB and after deleting the files only 16GB were deleted. What happened in reality is that, you only downloaded 12GB all this time, the 16GB only refer to the amount of bytes that you never downloaded.
If you have deleted the folder with all its files, you have freed up all the space that those files were taking.
Like I explained before, in your head you are thinking: the folder has 28GB, if it's taking 12GB on my disk then I must have deleted 16GB.
That is not what is happening, the files that should be taking 28GB from your storage are only taking 12GB, because you never finished downloading them, you only downloaded 12GB out of 28GB. You still have 16GB left to download. So if you delete the folder right now, it will free 12GB. If the files are taking 12GB on disk, then 12GB is all there is to be freed once you delete them.
To put it more didactically, let's pretend you have a disk with 100GB of free space. You download a torrent that totals 30GB. The torrent folder size will say 30GB, and size on disk close to 0 bytes. You still have 100GB of free storage in this moment. As the download progresses, the free space will decrease. Once you download 10% of that torrent, folder size will still show 30GB, but size on disk will have increased to 3GB. Your free space will now be 97GB.
If you delete all the torrent files at this stage, you will be deleting those 3GB, going back to 100GB of free space.
So to be as clear as day, if you have successfully deleted the folder and its files, you have already recovered all the space that there is to be recovered. There is no need to do anything at all, no de-fragmentation, no nothing. If you were expecting to free more space than what you actually got, you likely had a misconception of how incomplete torrents are stored.
Reinforcing: if you can still see a folder that says "size on disk: 12GB" you have not deleted all files! Once you delete that folder, you will get 12GB back.
If you still think there's something that I failed to explain, feel free to ask and I'll do my best.
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@ianfontinell-0 Thank you again for your explanation. I appreciate the thoroughness and time you invest in answering questions, not only on this topic but so many others. If there were an award for "Hero of the Forum," you would get it.
Back to this specific topic, and using more metaphorical and less numerical mind, it sounds like when someone downloads the 30 GB torrent spoken about above, at first the Windows OS "fences off" 30 GB of space for where the data will eventually go. Then, if one properly stops the torrent before downloading all the material, and the folder goes away, the "fencing" is removed, and the space previously reserved for the non-downloaded material is freed back up to the OS.
This topic also got me curious about the backup drives I use to store older material that I've downloaded, as well as some personal and business stuff. It seems that when I manually copy folders to those off-board drives, there's no wasted space. I tested one with "Disk Properties" and got the following:
It looks like there's only 0.1% of overhead here, which is certainly tolerable and not something I'm going to worry about. -
@eobox91103 thanks for the award
About your findings:
Windows itself does not âfence offâ or reserve disk space based on a file's self reported size. Most torrent clients do not pre-allocate by default. Instead, they create sparse files: files that have a full logical size (e.g. 30 GB) but only consume disk space for the pieces that have actually been downloaded.
This means nothing prevents you from starting two 50 GB torrents with only 50 GB free, both will download simultaneously until the disk fills up, at which point they will fail.
For example:
You have 100 GB free
You start downloading a 10 GB file
At 50% completion, only ~5 GB of disk space has been allocated
You still have ~95 GB freeEven though half the file does not exist on disk yet, when reading the file, NTFS returns zeroes for the missing regions, as most user-level applications cannot observe âholesâ in files, including Windows Explorer. There are backup tools that can copy sparse files exactly, without zero-filling the sparse regions.
When you copy such a sparse file using Windows Explorer, the copy process reads the entire logical file:
Real data for downloaded pieces
Zeroes for sparse regionsThose zeroes are then written to the destination file, causing full physical allocation. The copy is no longer sparse and now consumes the full disk space.
So when you say that copying folders to backup drives doesnât waste space, thatâs true for completed files. But copying an incomplete sparse file expands the holes and wastes space by filling them with zeroes.
In normal backup workflows, this is not a concern because completed files already have their full data written. Logical size and size on disk will naturally be very close. For complete files, the Size on Disk will usually be greater than the file size itself, things like the file name and path length can increase the size on disk by a few bytes, for example.
So in short, I hope you're not backing up incomplete files, and if you're not you're all good
