Update: I was using 501, not the latest, but I did check old restores, just a couple, which, when removed made no appreciable difference. Updating to 505 made no difference.
VSS is not an option on the Defraggler advanced menu. What is a "shadow" and how does it get gone?
More info:
This TB drive is a non-system, data only, external drive.
I have, now, several huge System Volume Information files, that's where the 100+ GB of storage seems to have gone. These are system, and so not deletable, files.
Just for the heck of it, I tried defragmenting freespace, and it made a hash of previously defragmented files, which had then to be redefragmented, and in that process I lost quite a few more GB! I thought defragmenting freespace would leave everything unfragmented and just sort of bump it closer together, so I'd have a more contiguous freespace area. Not so. A warning about that would be a nice feature. Also, I stopped the process mid way, when the time remaining said 23 hours to go! Maybe Defrag was going to re-defragment the moved re-fragmented files on its own eventually.
I can't say I understand defragmenting, but it doesn't make sense to lose such a huge amount of storage from just defragmenting the data on the drive.
What is happeneing, that Defraggler is gobbling up so much of my freespace, when no additional files are being added to this drive? Is there some W7 issue, about the way it tracks changes to a drive? In other words, is it Defraggler that's doing this, or W7 based on what Defraggler has done? If so, is there a fix?
Incidentally, is there a way to prevent files from fragmenting so much when they're being moved to this external storage. Any ideas?