Why was 480mb of free space added to my hard drive?

bbcmsb · #1 03-21-2005, 06:10 AM

This happened when my Windows XP was down to 10mb and it froze, so I restarted the computer and it automatically added 480MB of free space to my hard drive. I have no idea why it did this. Does Windows XP have some sort of spare backup storage space? I really hope it did not automatically delete random files or compress them. Does anybody know what happened to me and why?

Rayzyn · #2 03-21-2005, 09:08 AM

The size you're suggesting (480mb) sounds like the ammount of RAM is dumping.

bbcmsb · #3 03-21-2005, 09:47 AM

It shows on my hard drive that about 480MB of free disk space has been added to my hard drive. I am wondering what did my computer take away to free up that space. On the clean up wizard it has an option of compressing old files. Do you think that it could have compressed any of my video and audio files? Does file compression degrade a file? Can a file be reversed back to its original physical state after it is compressed? I dislike the fact that it automatically did that. Thank you.

Ant · #4 03-21-2005, 10:24 AM

Your computer cannot run correctly with only 10mb of disk space available. That is why it locked up. It is very likely that it automatically ran Disk Cleanup to recover some disk space, or it would not be able to run correctly. It would not have compressed or deleted files other than those in the recycle bin, temporary files (internet or otherwise) etc.

To ensure it doesn't happen again, try to keep more disk space free or replace your drive with one of a larger capacity.