Windows 10: Small files have a disk space of 0 bytes

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit


creating/downloading files even though size works, disk space says 0 bytes.

I tried checking my SSD thinking it had some problems, but all tools said it was at 100% health.

My system is updated and I ran system checks sfc, DISM but no errors were found.

The funny thing is files that have this problem are sometimes accessible, sometimes not.

I know a few others have this problem too, so I doubt It's something too specific to me.

:)

 

DVD Disk showing 0 bytes.

I brought new DVD of 4.7 GB, but after inserting it, it is sometimes not recognizing and when recognizing it is not showing any size,

as well as when I clicked on properties it is showing 0 bytes, I exchanged DVD but issue persists.

One more thing when I inserted disk at very first, it showed 4.38 GB blank space but after rebooting it is showing 0 bytes.

The disk is recognizing properly but the "Size bar" which is generally below the name of Disk not showing.

Also I tried to Add Files but the disk drive is ejecting and coming out.

My system:

Dell Inspiron 15R 5521

Windows 8.1 x64bit

 

NTFS problem: 0 byte file but "Size On Disk: 3.98 GB"

By using a Python script, I managed to mistakenly create a 4GB file on an NTFS USB drive with a colon in the filename. The resulting file name was all of the text up until the colon, but the file is listed as being 0 bytes. BUT when I check the file properties
it says "Size On Disk: 3.98 GB (4,282,056,704 bytes)". When I used a file recovery program such as Recuva and MiniTool Power Data Recovery, all 4GB seem to copy to another drive, but it still shows that it's 0 bytes (Size On Disk 3.98 GB).

Any advice as to what I could try next to fix this issue?

The file cannot be replaced easily so I'd like to get it back.

I'm not averse to low level disk editing if it comes to that.

Thanks in advance!

 

NTFS problem: 0 byte file but "Size On Disk: 3.98 GB"

Ok, so you created a file whose size according to Explorer was 0 bytes, but size on disk was 3.98GB (interestingly enough it's easy to do the opposite, i.e. create a sparse file whose size is a few bytes or GBs or whatever, but size on disk is 0 bytes).

However after that why exactly where you using data recovery tools? Did you delete the file by mistake?

Have you tried actually looking at the contents of the file with a hex editor or something? Or tried a disk editor to view the file on disk? How do you even know for sure that the file has/had any useful data inside?