'Used space' is still used space regardless of whether the files are hidden. What type of scan told you only 28 gig was used?

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Thanks to everyone who has commented so far. To bring you up to date: I use CCleaner and have done for about 12 months. I scanned for Index.dat, restore folder, and Normal.dot files and there was nothing significant. I scanned my hard drive with Treesize which says there are only 28 Gig used. After reviewing the content of some of the files I realised I backed up a 3gig file, which if I had forgotten about it may explain why I thought the space suddenly disappeared. Anyway for now lets hope 3gig is enough for now, and I'll get back if space 'disappears' again. Cheers

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A 40 gig drive partitioned as FAT32 would have a cluster size of 32 KB. That means a file smaller than 32 K would still be allocated 32 K of space on the drive. A file between 32 and 64 K will take up 64 K of space and so on. So you can see the total size of all the files will always be smaller than the total space taken up by the files. Maybe Treesize is using using the former figure and your OS is using the latter. It still seems like quite a difference but it's the best explanation I can think of.

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You can safely delete the following: ================================================= csrss.exe = malware *.bad = registry files that the system marks as bad *.bak = duplicate (backup) files (you many not want to delete these) *.bmk = windows bookmarks *.chk = ScanDisk disk error files *.cnt = Help tables of contents *.diz = Program description files (usually from Zip folders) *.dmp = memory dump files *.ftg = WordPerfect help file *.fts = temporary files recreated by Windows Help *.gid = Generated InDex (help) files *.idx = quick finder information file *.old = copy of older version (you may not want to delete these) *.prv = log files created by past windows boot-ups *.shs = scrap object *.syd = temporary backup files *.tmp = temporary files *.$*= temporary files *.~*= temporary files ~*.*= temporary files *.??~=temporaary files *.??$=temporary files You can also delete thumbs.db files, which will be rebuilt. These are databases of thumbnails for picture files. The never get smaller, even if you delete the original pictures. Use Delindex to delete index.dat files and other junk files: Download Delindex 5.1 and try it.

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I've found turning off system restore doesn't always clean house like it's supposed to do. In WinMe, there is the hidden directory c:\_Restore. Within this are five sub-directories. Archive Temp Extract SFP Logs The last three are usually empty or only have a couple of files. Archive and Temp, however, grow. Part of that is the System Restore files if you have that service on. To delete the files in the Archive and Temp folders, you need to use your DOS boot disk and delete them manually. To make the directories appear in Windows, use the following command: Attrib -r -s -h c:\_Restore Change the name of the appropriate directory as needed. This will make it visible. Windows will make it a system folder on the next reboot, but it will be visible in Explorer is you turn on the feature in your folder view options. I usually wipe both of these directories completely. One client I did this for recovered 130Meg of hard drive space. CCleaner will get the files in the Content.IE5 directory. Usually, when I'm in DOS, I'll go into the windows directory and just delete the "Tempor~1" directory; windows will recreate it on the next windows session.

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