Windows and macOS are both very reluctant to tell the user what's actually happening on their disk. They both insist on abstractions that hide the reality of ho

Windows and macOS are both very reluctant to tell the user what's actually happening on their disk. They both insist on abstractions that hide the reality of how partitions and filesystems are arranged behind the scenes. Sometimes that's a useful simplification, but sooner or later hiding that information from the user always leads to the OS lying about whether a device or filesystem is truly empty.