Hard drive missing a couple of gigs.

Howdy,

Got a bit of a question here regarding HD + XP. My computer has a 320gig HD which I partitioned into 3 parts. The C drive has 10 gigs and is meant to have the OS only as well as a couple of programs, and the rest of the space was supposed to be used to whatever the other programs that I install throw at it.

Now, I just discovered that I am using maybe 50% of the space (including hidden files if all of it is added up) yet it also states that I have roughly 1.5 gig left that I can use. I've cleaned out temp files, restoration points and whatnot else that you can think of and scoured through all hidden files, but no matter how I twist and turn it there's a couple of gigs missing still.

I'm kinda curious if XP happens to reserve space to something else besides restoration points or whether there is something else which I have overlooked. Defragging the drive is a bit of a pain now since I use Diskeeper and although being a really nice program and all, it insists for some silly reason that at least 20% of a drive's space must be free, and currently it refuses to fully defrag this drive.

The HD isn't damaged in any way either as far as I can tell.

 

As you said you are only keeping the OS on th epartition, I guess we can discount programs from filling th espace. It is possible you have a few apps there that like to install on th eptimary partition, or at least the OS partition. Other alternatives are games ( there are quite a few now that will deposit save files, and other bits and pieces in mt docs or my progs. Otherwise, things like quicktime, real player, etc have a habit of installing where they want to.
Failing that, I guess the swap file/ page file/ registry are the main contendors. Swap file size can grow hugely if it feels like it, as can registry. Page file may also become larger than you would like. Finally, there are shutdown files, or blue screen dumps. If you get en "unexpected shutdown", docs in word, along with many other files, can be left behind. These generally start with "~$" ( I think!!) and are not always identified as deletable, mainly because they are temp files when docs are open.
The only other one I can think of is the recycle bim. This will be allocated a percentage of disk space, but Idont know of it ever affecting windows.. its just a max size as opposed to allocated space.
Hope this helps, but I have a feeling it might only confuse th eissue