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jjbunn's avatar
jjbunn
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago

Total size of files and folders differs between Mac and PC/Dropbox.com

I have three machines fully synced with my Dropbox account. Two are Windows desktops, which both show a total size of my Dropbox folder as 590 GBytes. Dropbox.com also shows my account using 590 GByt...
Desktop
Mac
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Windows
  • jjbunn's avatar
    jjbunn
    5 years ago

    Hi Walter,

     

    Thanks. The Archive.zip file I showed you as an example, when viewed in Windows Explorer (as per the image), shows a size of 6.451 GBytes, whereas from the Command Prompt it shows:

     

    03/19/2020 03:06 PM 6,606,457,840 Archive.zip
    1 File(s) 6,606,457,840 bytes

     

    ... which agrees exactly with the size on the Mac:

     

    -rw-------@  1 julian  staff  6606457840 Mar 19 15:06 Archive.zip

     

    So, my conclusion is that the Windows Explorer is displaying the size based on units of 1024 bytes per kByte :-) I guess I should have known that!

     

    Thanks for your help.

     

    Julian

Walter's avatar
Walter
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

Thanks for the visual aid here jjbunn; much appreciated!

 

The difference in space you see reported on your devices is from the files that the desktop app doesn't sync on purpose and from the fact that Mac OS calculates the usage in a slightly different way than Windows OS. 

 

I hope this clarifies matters! 

jjbunn's avatar
jjbunn
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago

Hi Walter,

 

Thanks. The Archive.zip file I showed you as an example, when viewed in Windows Explorer (as per the image), shows a size of 6.451 GBytes, whereas from the Command Prompt it shows:

 

03/19/2020 03:06 PM 6,606,457,840 Archive.zip
1 File(s) 6,606,457,840 bytes

 

... which agrees exactly with the size on the Mac:

 

-rw-------@  1 julian  staff  6606457840 Mar 19 15:06 Archive.zip

 

So, my conclusion is that the Windows Explorer is displaying the size based on units of 1024 bytes per kByte :-) I guess I should have known that!

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Julian

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