Microsoft Word documents--space?

Question

I got the smallest size MacBook because I am using it for college and thought I would not need that much space for all my Word documents. I had this assumption because on a PC, my average Word documents (using Windows XP) took up about 36 KB of space. I am now writing my first essay on my new Mac and have found that after only a paragraph, this document is 80 KB! Why is this so much bigger than on Windows??

Answer 1

nbrown2 wrote:
on a PC, my average Word documents (using Windows XP) took up about 36 KB of space. I am now writing my first essay on my new Mac and have found that after only a paragraph, this document is 80 KB! Why is this so much bigger than on Windows??
It is possible that the Mac version stores more metadata than the Windows version, so that there's more overhead. But that may not be the only reason...
Can you do something for me. Highlight the Word file in its folder, and choose File/Get Info. You will see two numbers for Size. It will say "_ KB on dis (_ bytes)"
What do yours say, and can you move the file to Windows and check the size in Properties? Here's what I'm getting at.
I have a Word file and I'm going to check the sizes now on Mac and Windows.
On the Mac:
24 KB on disk (20,992 bytes)
In Windows XP, the same file as reported by Properties:
Size: 20.5 KB (20,992 bytes)
Size on disk: 32.0 KB (32,768 bytes)
Again, that's the same file. Here is what is going on:
Every file has two "sizes." One is the size of the file, and the other is the space it occupies on disk. What's the difference? Suppose you have a jetliner, a child, and a fat guy. How much space do they take up? By area, the child is much smaller than the fat guy. As far as the airline is concerned, though, both take up the same space: One seat each.
Your disk is divided into blocks. If a file needs less than a block, it must take the whole block anyway. Let's apply that to the size readouts above. There are two sizes reported on Mac and Windows, "Size" and "Size on disk."
"Size" is the *actual size*, or the size of the file itself. On Mac and Windows, *this is the same*: 20,992 bytes, or around 20.5 KB (that is, 20,992/1024 bytes to a kilobyte). On the Mac, it's the second number. On Windows, it's the first set of numbers.
"Size on disk" is the size on the block size of the drive as currently formatted. On the Mac, it's 24 KB. On Windows, it's 32 KB. Why is this different? Because one hard drive is formatted one way, and the other drive was formatted the other way. It would be like how First Class has fewer seats than Coach Class on an airplane, so in First Class where the seats are bigger, a single person uses up more of the cabin. My guess is that my Mac drive was formatted with 8 KB blocks so it rounds up to 24 KB, and my Windows XP drive is formatted with 16 KB blocks so it rounds up to 32 KB.
So what I'm getting at is it's possible your file may not really be bigger on the Mac, but the drive may be formatted differently than on your PC, affecting how the file size rounds up.
Another possible answer, I don't know about Word for Windows, but on the Mac, if you have Allow Fast Saves turned on, files can really bloat up more than they should, best to turn it off.
Still, anything under a megabyte is considered tiny these days.