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defag

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by don_c

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My hard drive had 21% free space and I thought I would delete some junk on it I removed about three gigs and still have 21% free space the HD is 20gig it says that I have only 4gigs left before i removed the 3gigs I check all my folders and I can only account for about 9gigs I ran windoze defrag and nothing than I ran Nortons Speed Disk (Why do they call that speed disk) and still I have only 4gigs left 21% Why am I loosing my hard drive doesn't defrag let you reclaim your free

5 replies

by thechas

First off, defrag does not reclaim hard drive space.

What defrag does is reorganize the files on the hard drive so that all of the clusters used for the file are in order and together.
Sort of like arranging documents in a manila folder.

Norton choose the name Speed Disk because 1 of the advantages of defragmenting your hard drive is that your system should now run a little bit faster.

On to your issue:

Did you empty the recycle bin after deleting the files?

If you do not empty the recycle bin, the files are actually still on your hard drive.

Windows XP also sets aside some space on your hard drives for "it's" own needs.
There is a way to limit the amount of space that is reserved for XP. But, I just can't remember what tool to use at the moment.

Chas

by thechas

Found the setting.

The setting I was referring to is the System Restore space.

Open System Properties. (right click on My Computer)

Select the System Restore tab.

For the drive(s) in question, reduce the amount of space available for system restore.

Warning: Reducing the amount of space available to system restore may reduce the number of available restore points.

Chas

by don_c

Yes Chas I did empty the recycle bin and I found the restore only two gigs but i'm still missing 3gigs from that and also something goofy going with my computer it just shut down all by it self and over 2 years its never done that thanks for the help

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