I won't criticize Defraggler but I felt it best to uninstall it and got to another program. Once again my free space was shrinking. The first time it happened I tried several things and free space was restored. My trouble began when I defragged free space. My solution was to defrag free space fragments allowed and the free space restored. The second and last time about 30 GB of free space disappeared. My solution was to use Disk Cleaner which comes with Windows and I went to the option of removing shadow copies and old restore points as recommended in the Defraggler Help. It brought back 30 GB of free space. Even with that recovery I may have lost 15-20 GB of free space since installing and using Defraggler. I did not keep track precisely of the free space but I have a general idea. I could say that my whole problem was related to using the defrag freespace. Had I not done that I might have been a happy user. I pass this experience on for what it is worth. I am using Win 7 Pro, 230 GB HD.
The sticky is not the answer. Already tried.
Here is a question. How do I check to see if Defraggler created duplicate files or other extra files? I installed a duplicate checker and found lots of duplicate files that were not due to Defraggler.
Defraggler does not create files especially duplicates
For sure shadow files were created because Disk Cleaner cleared out about 30 GB of them. I had no old restore files so it had to be shadow files. I don't know everything about shadow files but at this point they would seem to be duplicates. In the Defraggler Help it advises running Disk Cleaner to remove shadow file.
Ok I misunderstood what you referred to when you said create duplicates (which is windows and not defraggler) and thought you meant you thought as defraggler moved bits it was making duplicate files
However the turning off vss (per the sticky) will stop shadows being made as defraggler moves bits. The help section refers to what to do if the option is not checked off and shadows are created
Thanks for the replies. I am posting so my experience might be of use to Defraggler or some users. I did have vss checked when the shadow files were created and I do believe that Defraggler created the files. That is why I uninstalled it. I dearly hope that Defraggler did not create any other files that I cannot find. My HD has enough space that I will be ok in any case. Still since I try to be conservative in loading things onto my HD I would be a little upset to see 10-20 GB arrive on my HD for no reason. I trust that it did not happen once I got rid of shadow files. FWIW I could see the free space decrease directly after running Defraggler.
I am writing a follow up. After i uninstalled Defraggler I continued to see my free space diminish significanty. I restored my HD to time before Defraggler was installed. Now I am not seeing the free space diminish. My curiosity was raised about the restore points storage. I checked it and less than 1 GB was stored the maximum was 50 GB. I wonder if some of the 50 GB began to show as data although there is little data shown. I reduced the maximum storage to about 3 GB to be sure.