The size and file system of your drive make a difference. If you are harddrive that is FAT32 (win98 or newer), you will "lose" space rapidly. What FAT32 means, in an oversimplification (or not?), is that each block on your harddrive is 32KiloBytes. No more, no less. Here's an analogy. Let's look at suburbia, where every lot (block) is 1/4 of an acre (Richardson, TX). On one street, we have 10 lots or 2 1/2 acres. Each lot is a little more than 10,000 square feet ( ok, closer to 11K but this is supposed to be simple). Now let's build a house - and a good sized one (for my neighborhood) - 2,500 square feet. It takes a whole lot - That is, building permits require no more than one dwelling per lot. What's left in the block of homes? 9 quarter acres, or 2.25 acres, but we've only "used" 1/4 of a lot, which is 1/16th of an acre. Here's the screwey math: 2.5 acres minus .0625 acres = 2.4375 acres -- But in the neighborhood (or hard drive) 2.5-.0625=2.25 You can see how this works now, I hope. Even bigger files do the same thing. A 50KB file uses two 32KB blocks, so though the file size (used space) is 50KB, the Remaining space on your harddrive is TotalHardDrive-64KB! Used space and remaining space may not total Total Space! Hope this helps, and if I'm deadass wrong, please flame me directly and I'll personally withdraw my comments!
As for reformatting, it is certainly a pain, but does get rid of that stuff you no longer use. It does not solve the long term problem of shrinking harddrives, though. Tiedye Jeremy Kevin wrote: >So, with >all this being off my hd, it still is getting smaller. Is this normal? Do I >have to reformat it? > -- Nobody should take away Microsoft's freedom to innovate, particularly since they haven't used it yet _______________________________________________ etree.org etree mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://mail.etree.org/mailman/listinfo/etree Need help? Ask <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
