i defragmented my computer recently..
and it seems like i lost memory instead of gaining..
before the attempted defrag i had 90 gb free..
after the defrag i only had 86 gb..
does anyone know why?

For another users comments on this see here

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=16464

Defrag will not gain you any disk space, it only rearranges file fragments on the disk to make them contiguous.

What OS are you using?
If it is Vista, and if the volume shadow copy service is enabled on the drive, then defragging it with a defragger that is not VSS-compatible may trigger the creation of new shadow copies (restore points etc) and increase disk space consumption. I am not 100% sure of this, but this is what I understand. On my vista laptop I use Diskeeper 2008, and it's an excellent defragger. They recommend using the VSS-defrag option, to minimize the creation of new shadow copies and I've done so. So far, it has been working great.

If you are using XP, I am sorry, but I can't think of any answer to your question.

I have the volume shadow copy service set as manual on my Vista laptop and it has lost disk space before, due to Defraggler. The space seems to be lost in the System Volume Information folder, at least that is where it was last time I checked. That does make sense though that it has to do with the shadow copies because Vista comes with them enabled while XP does not (but it does have the same capability). Hopefully they will develop a fix soon.

I just defragged specific files with the Volume Shadow Copy disabled, and lost about 100 MB. Hopefully I got the space back when I removed all of the restore points, but at least now we know it is not because of the volume shadow copy that space is lost.

I just downloaded the latest version of Defraggler and used it on my HP laptop running Vista Home SP1 and seemed to work well. My disk space went up and down after several defrags. I proceeded to try it on my Windows XP Media Center PC running SP3 and I was shocked to see that it took much longer time to defrag and I lost 20GB of hard drive space. Is this normal for this RC2 product? Has anyone else experienced this same issue? Help I would like to regain my space.

Racer, can you identify what the new files are?


MrRon

I never looked at the file changes, I had noticed the disk space change after I had closed the application. Is there a log file that maybe I can look at? I just could not believe such a huge space change and I was only defragging 110GB.

Disable System restore, restart, defrag, re-enable it, and create a new restore point. You *will* lose all previous restore points.

Vista is a PITA when it comes to restore points. I really wish they had provided a way to "pause" the process or provided defragmenting software a method to temporarily disable it without losing restore points.

I don't use 'em, but I wouldn't suggest that anyone permanently disable them. In vista especially, their functionality is *greatly* increased and it can be a life saver. (I don't use them because I generally reload my systems every 3 months or so anyway...not because of some routine or some maintenance cycle gone wild, but merely because I seem to rather consistently get the urge to "break" stuff....)