[Windows] Set up a hard drive

 I recently got a new SanDisk extreme portable SSD, and would like to use it to back up my old PC.

After copying my disk to SSD, I found that a 30 GB on my old laptop becomes a 90 GB on the SSD. It took me a while to understand the reason.

I learned to check the disk allocation unit by going to CMD (administrative) and then type in the following on my PC

>chkdsk d: /f

The format is NTFS

The allocation unit size is 4096 b = 4k

>chkdsk e: /f (SSD drive)

The format is exFAT

The allocation unit size is 1048576 b = 1MB

The reason is that the SSD drive has a 1MB storage unit (mostly for photo and video these days), and it is much larger than 4kb on my PC. For small files, they will take up at least 1MB size in the SSD, which causes the expansion of the space being used. 

[Pycharm] New way to create project from existing sources

In the past versions, to start a new project, I need to use New Project from the File menu. 

But with the 2024 edition, I need to use Open instead. Otherwise it will create a new folder called PythonProject by default under the existing folder. Here is the guidance.

This change makes some sense, but it is quite difficult to navigate.