Hi. Wonder if anyone can explain this. I have done a clean install of XP Pro on 2 machines using FAT32 and I am a little confused. On the first machine, the reported space taken up by the install is 1.44 GB and the second machine reports 2.34 GB. The total size of the installed software, as far as I can see, is only about 1060 MB. Looking at the disk folders separately, taking into account the reported size on disk, slightly more space than 1060 MB will have been taken up. Using a little prog called TreeSize which analyses disk usage, the following infoo was obtained: Total Usage on C: 2340 MB Windows Usage 975 MB Programs 57 MB System Vol Info 22 MB Documents/Settings 8 MB 1279 MB Now it's the file listing which concerns me as I cannot find out what these files are or where they are. Can anyone assist? Second puzzling thing is this. During a previous install of XP I sent an ATI video drivers file to the Recycle Bin then, after a quick format, re-installed XP. Strangely, that file was still in the Recycle Bin. After spotting the discrepancy on disk size, I decided to do a full format and re-install to see if that would alter matters but it didn't. However, that ATI driver file was still in my recycle bin. Has anyone any comments or help on this. Seems very odd, if not sinister. Thanks

In my original post, the figure of 1279 MB is reported against a heading of "Files".

1 - System Restore eats up a chunk of disk space (this is the 'c:\system volume information' folder). The default amount reserved by windows is some percentage of your disk size, so the bigger the disk, the more space lost. 2 - page file (c:\pagefile.sys). Windows by default sets the minimum size of this file to 1.5 x RAM. The more RAM you have, the more space this file eats up. 3 - if hibernation is enabled (and I believe it is by default) windows creates a file to hold an image of your system memory (c:\hibernat.sys). The more RAM you have, the bigger the file. Note: all of the above are hidden and/or system files, so you may not see them, depending on how you have explorer configured. If you have lots of RAM and a big drive, the above files can add up to gigabytes of disk space...

Thanks for that reply. It certainly seems to explain what's happening there. My total hard drive is a nominal 40 GB with 9 GB on Drive C. Would that seem abbout right in view of what you've said? Do you have any thoughts re the recycle bin? Thanks

If you have your drive partitioned into more than one drive and you sent the ATI driver to the recycle bin from a drive other than your C drive which you keep reformatting, the file will stay in the recycle bin as each partition has its own. What would be really strange is if the driver file was deleted from the C drive/you empty the recycle bin/reformat your drive/and the file shows back up.

Since your C: drive is only 9GB I assume you have some or all the rest partitioned as additional volumes. Gotta agree with Mark here. No way reformatting a drive will leave ANY files, recycle bin or anywhere else. The recycle bin will show all deleted files, not only those deleted from the C: drive. If you want to see for yourself (gotta have explorer set to show hidden & system files), delete a file on your D: drive. Look in the 'recycler' folder on D:, you'll see it there. Now look in 'recycler' on C: - it's there too... Why not just empty your recycle bin and be done with it?

Thanks Mark and Big Juju for that explanation and, yes, the file in question was sent to the bin from the D drive. Didn''t realise that each drive had its own bin and was thinking XP had found some magic way of preserving files even after a format! Re your earlier answer on disk usage Big Juju, have now found those files and they add up neatly to close enough 1280 MB. Good job I've plenty of spare space. Thanks again for that info.