Medley Drive Size and Contributed Disk Space

Medley ensures that your data is available even if one computer in the pool fails.   Medley does this by storing extra copies of your data on other computers in the pool.  However, this means that Medley's disk space is reported differently than that of a plain disk drive.

Where is Space Reported?
Windows Explorer will report the Medley disk space (used space, free space, and capacity) if you right-click on the Medley drive and select "Properties..."

Contributed disk space is reported on the "Disk" page of the Medley control panel of each computer in the pool.

The General Rule
In general, the Medley drive capacity reported by Explorer will be half of the total disk space contributed to the pool.  This is because Medley reserves space for an extra copy of your data on other computers in the pool.

The Exceptions
If one computer in the pool is contributing more than half of the total disk space contributed to the pool, the capacity reported by Explorer will be the total of the disk space contributed from the other computers in the pool.

If there is only one computer in the pool, the contributed space will equal the capacity reported by Explorer.

Other Overhead
If you total up the size of all the files on the Medley drive you'll find this will be less than what Explorer reports as used space  This is because Medley, like all file systems, has some overhead associated with each file and directory that it maintains.