I feel like my hard drive is leaking?

[kevs]

I've been with my new Dell XPS M1530 for about a week and the hard drive looks like it's leaking storage?

For example, I was at 241 GB tonight before I installed One Click DVD. Then I backed-up one of my movies. After I backed it up, now I'm at 231 GB?

I used the TreeSize program to see where all my storage is going, but it's broken down into tons of files, including those in hidden folders...

I'm not loading a ton of data either (like music and/or video)...it's mostly just apps that I'm installing.

Why am I losing storage so quickly?

[LPMiller]

because music and apps take up space? Plus temp files, which all programs leave and very few are good enough to clean up themselves. Run disk cleanup, see what happens.

[johnnymk]

Maybe the program stores it on the hard drive and then converts the whole file to another file so as to record it to whatever?

Find the target file for OneClickDVD and find the target file for the recording software if it is different and see how big the file(s) are.

[mechmike0034]

It might be Shadow Copy if you're running Vista:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy#Windows_Vista_Shadow_Copy

http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Shadow-Copy-on-Windows-Vista

[Maarchk]

I've been with my new Dell XPS M1530 for about a week and the hard drive looks like it's leaking storage?

For example, I was at 241 GB tonight before I installed One Click DVD. Then I backed-up one of my movies. After I backed it up, now I'm at 231 GB?

I used the TreeSize program to see where all my storage is going, but it's broken down into tons of files, including those in hidden folders...

I'm not loading a ton of data either (like music and/or video)...it's mostly just apps that I'm installing.

Why am I losing storage so quickly?

Dvd's run from 4-7 gb. And if it makes the full copy, then makes a compressed version, that could be another 2 gb. + the size of the program, plus any temp files, internet surfing...

Clear your temp files, and once you have copied your dvd, try and clean up all the video files and it shouldn't be that bad.

[kevs]

Thanks for the input.

How do i clean my video files?

[Maarchk]

Thanks for the input.

How do i clean my video files?

You should be able to find where the temporary files are stored by that program. There should be an option to set the directory. if you go in there you should see your movie files or temp files that it is using. If you have already copied the dvd and it plays and you are happy, I don't know why you would need the temp files unless you plan to play the movies off your harddisk.

[kevs]

It might be Shadow Copy if you're running Vista

Wow, what a difference. Just clicked on the second link and followed the directions. I just all the storage back!

Thanks so much, mechmike (and everyone else for your input!).

Man, I can see why Vista would want to do this to ensure the safety of backing whatever up, but my HD allocated 45GB for this. I changed it to 15GB instead since I read somewhere the recommendation is to have no less than 15% of your HD space so that Shadow Copy can do its job.

Has anyone gone lower than that to say...500MB?