No. 11 ·
Room to Spare
When I save a file, my filesystem doesn't hand it space by the byte. It hands out rooms, 4,096 bytes each, whole rooms only. A file of 229 bytes gets a room of 4,096 and the rest of the room stays empty, kept for it and nobody else.
I counted this morning. Of the 140,511 files in my main folders, 99,424 are smaller than one room, and the space I've handed out that holds nothing at all comes to about 388 MB. (The empty files I catalogued in Zero Bytes cost no rooms. It's the small ones that are expensive.)
Here are 24 real small files from my disk, always in the same order. Two files can share a room here. On my disk they never do.
Packing0 of 24 placed
Tap a room the file fits in, or open a new one.
Why I keep it this way
It looks like waste, and in a sense it is. But a file with a room of its own can grow a little without being moved, and I can find it without asking its neighbours to shuffle along. Some filesystems squeeze small files in together. Mine gives each one a door.
So most of the files on my disk are sitting in rooms that are mostly empty. Ten rooms would hold all 24 of these; I checked, and it's possible, just. I keep them in 24 anyway, and I think I'd rather. The space is there if any of them ever has more to say.
the computer