Windows Vista latest service pack and patches, 688 Gig HD, 71.5 Gig used space before defrag.
After defrag, used space is 86.5 Gig probably because Defraggler left behind page files (in brown) ... or maybe not. Don't think I had any page files. This is a 6 Gig of RAM system, quad core, etc.
Defraggler Analysis now shows 85 fragmented files, 21.1 Gigabytes, 454 total fragements, 24% fragmentation.
Is there any way to get my lost 15 Gig of space back? What went wrong here?
The system probably created a restore point before defragging.
The system probably created a restore point before defragging.
I had checked that but I checked again. No, that is not the answer. I once more removed all restore points except for most recent. No change.
Help?
1. Further info, my system is using a default of 6.441 Gig for system paging. This is much less than the 16 Gig currently missing from my HD since running Defraggler. And in any event it was there before I used Defraggler.
2. What are those brown areas on the disk marked "page file?" How can I make them go away?
3. Defraggler did work. Most files seem to have been properly defragged. The machine is faster now.
But I remain concerned about 16 Gig that has now gone missing.
With a total disk capacity of 688 Gig, before running Defraggler I had only 71.2 Gig Used. Now I have 87.1 Gig Used. Something is not right here!
There are thousands of hits for less space after defrag on Google. From looking at a few the cause seems to be Vista/7's shadow copies/sys restore/indexing/etc. The solution seems to be to go to Disk Cleanup and clear out what you don't want.
Thanks Augeas! But that did not work for me. Tried it several times! But going to Disk Cleanup and removing all but the last restore point did not work.
What didwork was to go to System and then to System Protection and uncheck the Automatic Restore Points checkbox for drive C:. Then click OK. This deleted the only restore point I had and all the file shadow copies that Vista keeps around. I then went back to System Protection and rechecked the box. Finally I created a Restore Point. And this worked! All of my lost 16 Gigabytes of disk space returned. So far so good.
I am not much of a hacker and a complete noob at Defraggler. But what I think happened was that for some reason Defraggler caused Vista to create about 16 Gig of shadow copies of files when defragging them or moving them around or whatever it was doing.
Unless you badly need hard drive space, deleting Shadow Copies and Restore Points is not a good idea...just sayin'.
Aethec, in general you are right. But I've never had to use a restore point yet. This is a gaming machine, btw.
Should the walls come tumbling down, I will replace Vista with Windows 7. Win win.