Slack Space

Slack space or sometimes referred to as file slack is the area between the end of a file and end of the last cluster or sector used by the file in question. Area is an area that will not be used again to store the information there, so the area is "wasted" useless. Slack space is common in file systems that use a large cluster size, while the file system that uses a small cluster size can organize the storage media more effectively and efficiently. Amount of wasted disk space can be thought is estimated by multiplying the number of files (including the number of directories) with half the size of a cluster. For example, a 10 000 personal computer that stores files in a file system that uses a cluster size of 4 kilobytes will have approximately 10 000 x 2 MB ~ = 20000 KB. On a large file server, slack space and even reached the size of tens of gigabytes.