Quote Originally Posted by another view
So the other day I'm getting ready to do a defrag, because it's been awhile. I notice that my 120gb internal drive is almost full - like about 5gb left. I have no idea where all that space went, so I got rid of most of the images and a few other things. That gave me back about 2gb. I click on the "C" drive, and hold the mouse over "Documents and Settings". It tells me that file has 93gb in it. I open the folder, hold the mouse over each of the folders in it, and come up with a total that's nowhere close to 93gb. With Windows XP SP2, 1.5gb of music and some programs I should probably be about what, 10gb? Any ideas what's going on? Thanks...
Did you look at hidden files? I always set Windows to show me everything. It is quite possible that the disk has lots of hidden stuff.

A less likely situation is that you somehow changed the minimum size that each file takes up. File space is allocated in blocks. If you block size is 10 M and you file is only 1 M, it still takes up 10 M of space (bad numbers but the correct idea). This is the same for all computers. This can happen if you used some "tune-up" program or installed some weird software.

Also do a spyware/adware scan. These malicious programs can eat up space as well as slow your computer down.