Case of the Incredible Expanding Directory

[chucknorris]

I copied a directory containing mostly mp3s from the hard drive on my PC to an external drive. After I fixed a file name issue, both the directory and the copy had the same number of files and folders and weighed in at about 192 gigs. Now the bizarre part (well, for a n00b like me):

When I copy the directory from that external drive to my Mac using Paragon NTFS to translate, the directory grows to 205 gigs. And the gains seem spread out diffusely across the folders, so far as I can tell.

What the hell is going on here?

 

[Peace]

ds_store files. They add up if you've got 192GB.

 

[chucknorris]

ds_store files. They add up if you've got 192GB.

Ahhh. That explains it. Novice question: what purpose do these ds_store files serve?

Thank you!