Check if you have a lot of trashed files. I don't think that windows counts them. You can use "du" to examine individual directories and files. "du -s" will just give you the total usage of directories. This may turn up some surprises. I don't know whether Windows counts the "System Volume Information" directory. It contains past snapshots of the drive. Perhaps windows will drop them as more space is needed.

Also, you might try "fsck.vfat" to check if any problems are detected.

I guess I'm still left wondering, is this just a reporting problem? Does linux get errors when trying to read and write to the fat32 partition? I have looked at my own ( I have 2 fat32 partitions ) that report correctly in both win98 and Mandriva 2006.

If there are no errors, from linux, how important is it to fix it?

As I stated earlier, there are many threads out there reporting this type of difference. Most of the problems can be traced using the du command.

What type of files are on this disk ( mostly )? Remember, a 1 byte file in fat32 occupies one cluster. How big are the clusters? You can tell with a program like Partition Magic.

hi guys,

i hve checked. I can copy a file (a movie) DiVx on my d: drive. I cant copy a file of few Kb from SuSe because i get warning message that my disc is full ????
Can you explain that???

Would you have a look at posts 16 and 17, try the commands suggested, and tell us what you find. There is some file or remnants of a file filling your disk, at least that is what linux thinks.

It may also help if you could answer the questions I posted in 17, although now I know it is effecting how linux preforms. There is an answer, we need to find it.

As I said this is a separate Maxtor 40GB HDD. I use it to save my files ( mostly text files, ACAD drawings) and I have also some programs as ACAD, Adobe, vocabularies, etc. installed there. I can read all my files fom Linux, I can write even some small files there. I have checked this HDD with every possible win tool. All I get is that this disc is perfectly healthy, has 64% free space and is doing great from the windows pointof wiew. I do not know exactly how big is the cluster . All I can remember is that I left it to the formatting tool then (think it is 512kb). But i will check.

riba43:/home/bgorjup # du -s
1182024 .

I have been trying to solve the problem. No way, I cant. I have reinstalled my system, i did everything, I googled around-nothing. Cant solve this myself. I am not en experienced Linux user, more the beginner. I cant see the drive in My Computer but it is in fstab.

/dev/hda6 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hda7 /home reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/hda1 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /windows/D vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0


Is there somebody who really can help. As I mentioned , HDD is not full, is "sane" and i can read from it. I can even write to it but a very small file from SuSE. In Wins it is OK and is 66% free and I can copy a DVD on it if I want. Weird isnt it??

Hi guys,

Nobody can help.
How can SuSE treat my dev/hdb1 as full when it is ONLY 34% full. I am getting mad!!!! What to do.


bgorjup@riba43:~> df -h
Dat. sist. Vel. Upor Prost Upo% Priklopljeno na
/dev/hda6 14G 5,5G 8,3G 40% /
udev 250M 124K 250M 1% /dev
/dev/hda7 41G 4,1G 37G 10% /home
/dev/hda1 20G 11G 9,0G 55% /windows/C
/dev/hdb1 38G 38G 37M 100% /windows/D