df -h vs cfdisk info, incorrect size of new drive
 

I just bought a brand new 80G Samsung drive .. I created a fev partitions and when I mount one of them, this is what I see:

# df -h
/dev/hdb6 66G 33M 62G 1% /mnt/data

huh ... 66G - 33M != 62G

on top of that cfdisk tells me that this partition is 72004.11MB = 70.3165GB

Why is "df" telling me that a 70.3GB partition is only 66GB of which 62GB are free because 33MB are used???

by the way the file type is ext3, I get simillar results with "df" when using ext2 file system.


Thanks for any replys in advanced :)

The difference between the actual size of the partition and the what df reports is space reserved for root. The default is 5%. This is emergency space that root can use if the filesystem has errors or something happens where the partition fills up.

You can use tune2fs to adjust the size. Since this is a data partition you could make it zero. I don't recommend going to zero for the root partition. If the filesystem has errors or the partition fills up happens the OS might crash and you will not be able to log in.

Thanks michaelk ... that's just what I wonted to hear :)

I'll read up on tune2fs now.