Defrag = Memory Loss?

BurnsCarpenter

I started a long overdue disk defragmentation the other night and noticed my hard drive space disappearing. It went from 109GB of free space down to 89 before I stopped the defrag.
I assume this wasn't supposed to happen?
Would it have sorted itself out if I hadn't cancelled the process?
It was defragmenting for hours and the memory hasn't returned since.
Any ideas anyone?

dubfir

At a guess I would say it system restore taking up the space as it probably did a backup before defrag. Try turning system restore off and on again.

Overheal

or it reserved that as swapspace to put fagments before reconstituting and moving them somewhere else.

encryptix

in my experiece it would go back up, it should be just space that is used while organising the files. An example would be the defrag that comes with xp, you need 12% (i think) to defrag properly with it.

BurnsCarpenter

So, I allowed the defrag to complete and another 10 gigs disappeared, but hasn't returned.
Is it possible that the system automatically backed up everything? Could that be deleted safely, and where would it be stored? (I'm using Vista.)
Thanks!

encryptix

BurnsCarpenter wrote: »

So, I allowed the defrag to complete and another 10 gigs disappeared, but hasn't returned.
Is it possible that the system automatically backed up everything? Could that be deleted safely, and where would it be stored? (I'm using Vista.)
Thanks!

look around starting on the root of the drive ( c:/) and view the properties to see where the space could now be in use > do this until you find the folder and then go in and try to get a specific one.

BlackWizard

TreeSize may help.