What can I do about like my 31GB or maybe 254GB system?

I had an about 31GB system. I reformatted a 2TB USB between ext4 and NTFS and tried to own it some because I could not get that thing to write. After it was all done, I still had mostly showing 31GB system but Disks and System Usage Analyzer only before analysis, not after, showed about 251GB. I have since done command line clean and recovery mode clean. Both continue to exist and update as I add more files. What can I do? What could this be? I now have an about 32GB or maybe 252GB system. I have 2TB of storage so I can take this hit but still, glitch. I have and had an Ubuntu 22.04.3 desktop with Ubuntu Pro Lenovo Thinkpad T460. All as per one might be maybe or might not be maybe, maybe or maybe not, maybe.