I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88

Contrary to how you "think" the defragmenter works - it does NOT clear up
the disk to give you more free space.

It arranges the files on the disk and puts the each file in one contiguous
piece (instead of many). It also consolidates the files so you may have a
larger amount of contiguous free space, but not more free space.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88

"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to date,
never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to
date, never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

I wouldn't say Defrag has never freed up space. With the small
allocation units in NTFS, any freed space would be insignificant.
However, with FAT32 and 32KB allocation units, back in the days
of Win9x, Defrag could recover useable space from a badly
fragmented drive. You could possibly recover 1 - 2MB for every
100 file fragments. Maybe insignificant with today's drives, but
a useable amount with the smaller drives back then.

Jgiordano88 wrote:
I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space.

Hmmm....as another poster pointed out, defrag'ing shouldn't, AFAIK,
"clear up a ton of space" but rather just reorder the files for better
continuity.

Implementing a "disk cleanup" has the possibility of freeing up a lot of
hard drive space though.... :-)


I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.



Not absolutely sure if the following info is still relevant for Vista or
not......

Scan your harddrive for files ending in a ".CHK" extension. These files
consist of data that have "lost their links"....these bits of data,
while not showing up as part of the total of used disk space before
defrag'ing, could possibly be regathered and renamed with the ".CHK"
extension for recovery purposes. If this is indeed the case with your
last defrag/maintenance session, then this might explain why you seem to
have lost 3 gigs of hard drive space as the size of these files will now
be included in the hard drive "used space" count.

Anyways just a thought...... :-)

PS...you might have to toggle "Show system/hidden files" before doing a
search for the ".CHK" files.

"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to
date, never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

I wouldn't say Defrag has never freed up space. With the small
allocation units in NTFS, any freed space would be insignificant.
However, with FAT32 and 32KB allocation units, back in the days
of Win9x, Defrag could recover useable space from a badly
fragmented drive. You could possibly recover 1 - 2MB for every
100 file fragments. Maybe insignificant with today's drives, but
a useable amount with the smaller drives back then.

Ooops, I meant to say FAT16.

"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to
date, never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

I wouldn't say Defrag has never freed up space. With the small
allocation units in NTFS, any freed space would be insignificant.
However, with FAT32 and 32KB allocation units, back in the days
of Win9x, Defrag could recover useable space from a badly
fragmented drive. You could possibly recover 1 - 2MB for every
100 file fragments. Maybe insignificant with today's drives, but
a useable amount with the smaller drives back then.



A 1k file will take up 4k of space, assuming that 4k is the cluster size,
regardless of where defragmenter places it..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and
for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to
date, never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

I wouldn't say Defrag has never freed up space. With the small
allocation units in NTFS, any freed space would be insignificant.
However, with FAT32 and 32KB allocation units, back in the days
of Win9x, Defrag could recover useable space from a badly
fragmented drive. You could possibly recover 1 - 2MB for every
100 file fragments. Maybe insignificant with today's drives, but
a useable amount with the smaller drives back then.



A 1k file will take up 4k of space, assuming that 4k is the cluster size,
regardless of where defragmenter places it..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

That's my point. If there are a lot file fragments, the unused space
in the last cluster of each fragment will be released during
defragmentation. This won't amount to a whole lot with 4K clusters,
but could with 32K FAT clusters, back in the days of much smaller
drives.

If you had a fat16 file system with 32 k clusters a 1 k file would waste 31
k - no matter how you defragmented it. Defragmenting will not magically
release the 31k for use. Nor will defragmenting place more than 1 small file
in a cluster.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and
for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no
idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded
anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to
date, never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

I wouldn't say Defrag has never freed up space. With the small
allocation units in NTFS, any freed space would be insignificant.
However, with FAT32 and 32KB allocation units, back in the days
of Win9x, Defrag could recover useable space from a badly
fragmented drive. You could possibly recover 1 - 2MB for every
100 file fragments. Maybe insignificant with today's drives, but
a useable amount with the smaller drives back then.



A 1k file will take up 4k of space, assuming that 4k is the cluster size,
regardless of where defragmenter places it..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

That's my point. If there are a lot file fragments, the unused space
in the last cluster of each fragment will be released during
defragmentation. This won't amount to a whole lot with 4K clusters,
but could with 32K FAT clusters, back in the days of much smaller
drives.

"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Ian D" wrote in message
...

"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
"Jgiordano88" wrote in message
...

I ran a defragmenting session last night to clear up some space, and
for
some reason my C drive has dropped from 33.1 GB to 29.1

This has happened to me once before, but the other two recent
defragments I've ran cleared up a ton of space. I honestly have no
idea
where the other three GBs have gone and I have not downloaded
anything.
I run a disk cleanup every night.

Thanks for any help.


--
Jgiordano88


Do you ever use the function in Disk Cleanup which deletes all system
restore points except for the last one?

That will get you some space. Defrag will never free up space and, to
date, never has..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

I wouldn't say Defrag has never freed up space. With the small
allocation units in NTFS, any freed space would be insignificant.
However, with FAT32 and 32KB allocation units, back in the days
of Win9x, Defrag could recover useable space from a badly
fragmented drive. You could possibly recover 1 - 2MB for every
100 file fragments. Maybe insignificant with today's drives, but
a useable amount with the smaller drives back then.



A 1k file will take up 4k of space, assuming that 4k is the cluster size,
regardless of where defragmenter places it..


--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

That's my point. If there are a lot file fragments, the unused space
in the last cluster of each fragment will be released during
defragmentation. This won't amount to a whole lot with 4K clusters,
but could with 32K FAT clusters, back in the days of much smaller
drives.



Defragging does NOT release the unused part of a cluster. As far as I know,
two files can't occupy one cluster. regardless of file size.

Small 4k cluster sizes are used by default because more it is more efficient
in terms of space used, unless the hard drive is used to store great many
files of less than 4k size.

The problem with small clusters is that the average size of a file these
days is larger than the 1k of a basic text file. A 36k file will occupy 9 or
10 clusters, all of which can get separated, hence fragmentation. It gets
worse as general file size increases.

Raise the cluster size to 16k, and the 36k file now only occupies 3
clusters. In this way, fragmentation will not be as bad, but if you then
save a great many smaller files, a lot of space will be wasted.

--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/