OK I have a Dell Laptop which I have had for about two years now. It is on Windows Vista and has 99GB space, however I only have 2GB free space left due to the various video and music collections I have built up over the last two years.

Well that was until the other day. The other day I decided to record myself playing on my Wii using my webcam. The quality wasn't the best but it worked well enough, I got quite carried away and in the end the video ran for about half an hour. I then went to the saved video file at the end of playing to find the file it had created was 15.9GB in size. Firstly I thought it was a bit strange the video file was so big considering it was only in AVI and only half an hour long. Secondly, I thought it was even stranger that my computer was able to save the 15.9GB file to my desktop when my devices say the C drive only has 2GB from the 99GB left. Well I kept the video for a few days but then decided I didn't need it so I deleted the video file, once the video was deleted (it was too big to go in the recycle bin) I then went and checked the C drive for how much space I have. I found out that I now have 17.7GB free. This was very strange considering I seemed to have gained about 15GB space from nowhere. I have checked through all of my files and none of them have been deleted and all my documents remain the same. So basically I am just wondering if anyone could tell me what on earth has happened here?

How have I managed to magically gain 15GB and what the hell was this video file anyway? Why was it so big and why did it let me save and play it back if it was telling me I didn't have enough room before it was created?

Any help would be great.

Thanks.

Well it seems like there may have been temporary files taking up that space that were cleared off automatically by windows to make room for the video file. Regularly running disk cleanup will help you maintain your disk space.

Also just a note: Memory = RAM, Hard drive space = Storage.

quote

Firstly I thought it was a bit strange the video file was so big considering it was only in AVI and only half an hour long

this might have been part of your problem. AVI is uncompressed. and for half an hour it would have been a considerable amount. the rest is probably just temp. files like cheesy said.

and i suggest you download CCleaner and run it once a month (maybe twice). it will get rid of anything that isnt needed, which is safe to delete. it also comes with a registry cleaner, and a remove programs list...which loads a hell of a lot faster than the one in the control panel.