Arch Linux

jwrichards82

Member

Registered: 2023-01-24

Posts: 20

HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

I am not sure how to search for this issues, and due to that googling isn't helping much.

I have a 12TB drive that is about three years old. I primarily use it for file storage. I had it when I was on Windows 10, when I decided to use Arch for a while, and again recently when I got back on Arch again. when  I first formatted it, it had a GPT partition table with NTFS. Recently, I noticed there was an issue with some files. I could not open them. owner and group were listed as root. using chown I wasn't able to make the owner and group my user. I couldn't change it to any user or group!. I rebooted into a maintenance mode and (I just booted off the install USB, mounted drives and chrooted in.  I ls'd my way to the files and applied the same chown commands. Still no change and no errors that I was using the commands incorrectly. I rebooted, logged in as my normal user and through terminal, elevated to root user and tried again. Same thing. No changes to permission of any kind. chmod adjustments wouldn't work either. I can't remember one of the commands I tried to use gave an error about incorrect partition table? Anyway, a google search mentioned I should boot into something like gparted or what not and there was a way to do it with a slightly less chance of losing data. I spent the day backing everything up to another 12TB drive I have, wiping the partition and making a new ext4 partition. Since I am not going to use Windows again, why not? After 8 hours, I wasn't in the mood to deal with it anymore. So, I just deleted the partition, rebooted and made a new partition or ext4. The problem is; there is 89GB of data already used.
There is nothing in the Lost+found folder in Dolphin. Using the terminal, again, shows nothing in that folder. No hidden files. I thought I did something wrong, so instead of using partition manager, I used fdisk to delete the partition, reboot again, make a new partition using all available space and used the mkfs.ext4 command to format the partition. And it still reports the 89GB of used space...

I have no idea how to frame my search term for this and just plainly writing the question into google isn't bringing up anything helpful. advices once I've spent time reading them,m, weren't given to address my problem.
Does anyone have any ideas?  I rebooted into a Windows ``PE maintenance image I have that has some hard drive utilities and SMART is not reporting nay errors, Crystal Disk view is showing the drive in good health, a general scan revealed no bad sectors (sector by sector would apparently take another day or two). I am at a loss. The only thing I think might have been an issue was I used a program called Lock-A-Folder, but one of the first things I did was unlock that folder and made sure I could access it before I rebooted and start wiping things out to install Arch.

For S&G's I thought since the drive "lived its life" as an NTFS partition, maybe going back to NTFS might revel the "ghost" files ( no idea why I thought this) sure enough, nothing found on the drive, but it reported only 413 MB used.
I put it back to ext4 and still, 89.18 GB used. Is that 89GB normal overhead for the ext4 jounalling and such? I don't remember reading anything about that in any documentation I have been able to find.

Last edited by jwrichards82 (2024-08-06 14:26:45)

gromit

Administrator

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,534

Website

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

Which partition layout does the drive now have? Could you paste the output of "lsblk --fs /dev/sdX" for the relevant drive? Otherwise you can also just give the full output with "lsblk --fs"

jwrichards82

Member

Registered: 2023-01-24

Posts: 20

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

 NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sdc1 ext4   1.0         5b58464d-5b81-4f37-af78-dfa3ee865c02 

I just edited my original post before I saw the response.

For S&G's I thought since the drive "lived its life" as an NTFS partition, maybe going back to NTFS might reveal the "ghost" files ( no idea why I thought this) sure enough, nothing found on the drive, but it reported only 413 MB used.
I put it back to ext4 and still, 89.18 GB used. Is that 89GB normal overhead for the ext4 jounalling and such? I don't remember reading anything about that in any documentation I have been able to find.

Last edited by jwrichards82 (2024-08-06 12:10:36)

gromit

Administrator

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,534

Website

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

Could you post the output or "lsblk --fs /dev/sdc" please? sdc1 is the partition and not the drive

Also "df -h /dev/sdc" wouldn't hurt ...

You could also see if a tool like ncdu shows you what hogs space on your drive!

jwrichards82

Member

Registered: 2023-01-24

Posts: 20

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

here ya go

[jrich82@jrich82arch2024 ~]$ lsblk --fs /dev/sdc
NAME   FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sdc                                                                           
└─sdc1 ext4   1.0         5b58464d-5b81-4f37-af78-dfa3ee865c02   10.3T     0% /run/media/jrich82/5b58464d-5b81-4f37-af78-dfa3ee865c02
[jrich82@jrich82arch2024 ~]$ df -h /dev/sdc
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
dev              16G     0   16G   0% /dev
[jrich82@jrich82arch2024 ~]$ 

EDIT had to actually mount the partitions to give more useful data

Last edited by jwrichards82 (2024-08-06 13:02:30)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,210

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

Ext4 reserves 5% of the disk for root so that one can still do operations in case of a full drive. on a 12TB drive 89GB sounds about right.

You can configure this reserve to be less... (or disable it), see both of the subheadings under https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Ext4#C … filesystem -- but the reserved blocks is likely the more relevant one.

df -h is more interesting if you df -h the mount point

Last edited by V1del (2024-08-06 13:05:46)

jwrichards82

Member

Registered: 2023-01-24

Posts: 20

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

And that isn't mentioned in the documentation I've been reading. Another thing I'll be getting to understands with a lot of what Windows does/doesn't do.  I just wonder why that isn't mentioned. Maybe I just glossed over it? I dunno. 89GB isn't a huge loss on a 12TB drive so, I'll just leave it alone. I was just beginning to think I was doing something wrong somehow. hehehe

Thanks a bunch V1del!

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,167

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

as drives usually marketed with decimal system a 12tb drive has 12.000.000.000.000 bytes - roughly 10.9tib
5% of 12.000.000.000.000 are 600.000.000.000 - or 600gb or about 558gib
89g(i)b doesn't add up to 5% neither decimal nor binary

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,210

Re: HDD partition and "ghost" files [closed]

It's going to be a combination of the inode space/the reserved space and marketing lies. Default inode space will likely take a big chunk