available & free space?

[carlamint+3]

Hi everyone,

Can someone explain this to me, please?

My laptop has a 500Gb SSD and Mint installed on it. My files take 56Gb, but:

> Disks shows there is only 418Gb available (after installing Mint, I guess); and

> Files Manager shows there is only 392Gb free space (after adding my files).

What I don't understand is:

> where did those 82Gb go to after installing Mint? I just added Librewolf to the original installation; and

> 418 (available) minus 56 (my files) = 362Gb (free space); however, the free space available is 392Gb, which I think is too little based on the information above.

There is also a small partion (EFI System) which only takes 537MB, so it is irrelevant.

Does this make sense to you?

I will appreciate your feedback. Thanks in advance.

[Coggy]

A lot of that missing space is probably just the difference between Gigabytes (GB) and Gibibytes (GiB).
1 GB = 1000*1000*1000 = 1000000000 bytes
1GiB = 1024*1024*1024 = 1073741824 bytes.
500 GB = 465 GiB.
500 GiB = 536 GB.
For some reason, lots of software displays in gibibytes instead of gigabytes but doesn't bother to use the right suffix.
du has the option to display in either - see the difference between du -h and du --si!

If you're trying to be precise, most programs have the option to display the sized in bytes, even if they don't say whether they show GB or GIB.

[AndyMH]

On ext4 filesystems, 5% is reserved for system use. This dates from way back when drives were smaller, makes less sense now. You can change it with tune2fs.

[motoryzen]

Adding to AndyMH's point...

The terminal command below will change your system reserve % from the default to 1 % on what Mint recognizes as the nvme m.2 drive depending on how you have it partitioned vs default ( aka if you didn't select " Something Else " when you ran the Mint installation wizard ...thus you may have to experiment with the precise last part of that /dev/nvme#n#p# part)

sudo tune2fs -m 1 /dev/nvme0n1p3

change the nvme part to the /dev/sda# that is applicable to your 500GB ssd ...IF it is connected via sata

run lsblk first to confirm how your drives are mounted.

You can even put 0.5 instead of 1 if you want, but some have said that could risk data loss in certain scenarios. I'm fine risking that for my 16TB movies drive as I'm working to use handbrake to shrink movies to make room. You decide.

[AndyMH]

From memory, the partition you are running tune2fs on has to be unmounted. If it is your / partition you are trying to change you need to boot from your install disk to do it.

[carlamint+3]

Thank you all for your replies.

I am not sure about whether the issue has to do with how the apps display the memory available. Both Files and Disks clearly display Gigabytes as GB (not GiB), so there is no conflict there.

There are only two partitions: Partition 1 (EFI System, FAT, 529MB), and Partition 2 (Linux FileSystem, Ext4, 500GB). Both are 'mounted'.
When I install Mint, I choose the option that erases the whole SSD.

Hope that clarifies something.
Thanks.