Where is all my HHD space going?

[Amicuscat]

Hello everyone,
In the process of decripting a movie, and taking into effect that it was my 1st. one burned ever,and following all of you'als advice on how,what and which programs to us to help backup my DVD collection,I inadvertently re-decipted the same movie over about 4 or 5 times,just overwritng the existing files, in the same directory,but when I finnally got a clean copy that would burn, I checked my HHD and instead of only using up 7.5 gig's, my HHD had had shrunk from 68 gigs to 45gigs? I cleaned out my temp dir. and even ran a 3rd. party dsk. cleanup utility but to no avail. I still lost alot of space. Can anyone please advise me on what I did wrong, and how to correct it and how to avoid it in the future? This has been a real steep learning curve for me but I'm determined to master this DVD backup problems created by the movie industries encription solutions to piracy. Thanks again for any help.
I've read so much my brain has turned to mush!!!!

[soup]

Welcome to the Forum. Without knowing what process you used to do this, it would be pretty hard to come up with something. Normally to do a full dvd you need between 15GB to 20Gb. This looks like you have 3 dvd files on your drive somewhere.

[blutach]

Empty your recycle bin and if you have Norton installed, empty that too.

Regards

[Amicuscat]

THanks Guy's,
I have found 2 different folders with my ripped files in them and have reclaimed about 14gigs but it still doesn't seem like I should be using up an additional 10 gigs from when I started but I did DL all the apps suggested by this forum like DVD decriptor, DVD shrink, Pg edit. and the plug-ins and image burn etc...ect..ect...
I don't use Norton, but do use Mccafee and Zonealarm...also I have Nero 7 suite but haven't really figured out how to use it execpt to burn CD's. I will continue to read all the guides for the different app's and maybe I might just get the hang of this stuff eventually.
Again thanks for your help.

[Gary D]

If you are in Windows XP, use the advanced search with the largest file size selected (in the start menu button). In the results under file size, click the file size heading twice. The first click puts the smallest on top. The second click puts the largest on top. Here are the instructions:


Click on start
Click on search and select "for files and folders" and search results come up.
Click on "All files and folders"
Click what size is it
Select large and click search
In the search results window, double click the file size heading
Then look at the results and figure where your files are to delete.

[Amicuscat]

Wow
Thank you All!!!!
I've found all my missplaced vts files and ifo & iso files also. Also I've found alot of old files that either had forgotten that I had DL'ed or media files that I no longer wanted or needed.
A special thanks to GD... about the advanced search in WinXP.