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File sizes

The area of each rectangle in a view window is proportional to the size of the file it represents. There are different ways to measure a file's size. The measure that GrandPerspective uses when scanning a folder is determined by its Preferences.

File size measures

GrandPerspective supports the following file size measures:

Which file size measure to use is partially a matter of taste but also depends on the situation. Physical size best shows how much space is freed up when you delete a file but exposes more details of the underlying file system. Logical size best represents the intrinsic size of the file content but can occasionally severely over-estimate the disk usage. In particular, the logical size can be larger than the actual required storage for:

Tally size should only be used for exceptional circumstances. For example when you want to find folders that contain many (possibly small) files.

File size unit systems

When reporting file sizes, GrandPerspective uses one of the following unit systems:

See also