What can happen is that the amount of free space can be erroneously reported
after a lot of deletions and defragging can force the system to re-enumerate
the free space. I have seen that strange effect a couple of time under both
XP and Vista. It isn't common but emptying the recycle bin and then running
a defragger can resolve such an issue.
"Steve Thackery" <nobody@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uxF%23t0R0IHA.3920@xxxxxx
Quote:
> I'm inclined to think this is a coincidence. I don't think there is any
> way defragging your disk can result in a loss of disk space (not
> permanent, anyway).
>
> As the other contributors have said, Vista runs other activities which
> consume disk space. I would take their advice re backups, Disk Cleanup,
> etc.
>
> Two last things to say about defragging. Firstly, manually defragging is
> not a sensible response to seeing your disk space go down. Defragging is
> not intended to release disk space, nor consume it. It simply reorganises
> the data on the disk to make it faster to access. (In reality defragging
> can release some space, but only a bit, and that isn't its real purpose).
>
> Secondly, you should never need to defrag manually anyway. Vista kicks
> off a defrag once a week automatically, and all the informed opinion is
> that it works fine if you leave it to its own devices).
>
> I would look elsewhere for what is using up your disk space. It is almost
> certainly Vista doing its normal business, though, and I honestly think
> you could safely ignore it.
>
> SteveT