"Recovering Unused Disk Space" ??

[billt]

Every now and then I'll get a small window that pops up, along with one of those little sliding green "gauges", that tells me my computer is "recovering unused disk space". What exactly is it doing? Does it automatically take stuff off the disk and get rid of it? It comes on about every 2 or 3 days, then disappears in just a few seconds. I don't have to close it out.

I have one hard drive that is partitioned. Is it taking stuff off the main part of the drive, and dumping it into the other? I ask because if I go into "My Computer", my "used space" on the one part of the partitioned drive is always at about the same amount. I'm running Windows 7 Premium Home Edition.

[Jrlobo]

Win7 is de-fragmenting your files, most often in email. You must have auto-defrag set or something. The best solution to this is: buy a MAC and enjoy.

[tombogan03884]

As I understand it when you delete something it leaves a hole in the information stored on your hard drive.
Defragging is like stomping in the trash can, it packs the information so that those holes are filled and the empty space returns to the top of the can where you can use it.

[Timothy]

Remember the disks are spinning constantly at 7K RPM or faster/slower.  When the disk is written, the bits and pieces of a file are scattered all over the drive when they're written from RAM.  When defrag runs, it's gathering all of the fragmented files and grouping those little bits of data closer together on the drive so the computer isn't chasing all over the place looking to compile them again every time you open a file.  It's about 1's and 0's....

I run defrag very rarely because I don't save anything to my hard drive too often.

[billt]

If I manually run a defrag program, it can take as long as 2 hours. This takes place in seconds.

[Sponsor]

[Solus]

Defraging was critical a few years ago when the transfer rate of disks were very slow by today's standards.  Now disks are faster and there are techniques to speed up access..caching, for example.

I'm betting it is either deleting temporary files that are no longer needed or removing files you have deleted but are saved in the "Trash"...or both of these.

The system would be doing this if the space used on your hard drive is approaching it's capacity.