Progressive Loss Of Hd Space

I recently cloned my win7 160g hd to a larger capacity 500g since I was approaching the upper limits. I have been downloading large video files to an external hd, then deleting into trash when finished. An example that puzzles me is if I download a 5g video to the external hd, it uses 5g of external hd capacity, as expected. After use I delete it and it goes into the win7 trash, and while in the trash, the win 7 primary internal hd shows a drop in available hd space of 5g, as expected. But when I empty the trash, I do not recover the 5g reduction, even after reboot. This process is what I was doing when my first 160g primary drive unexpectedly reached full capacity. I can find no duplicate file that I am overlooking, but at this rate, I will exceed the new 500g drive. Is there a built in backup that I am unaware of? How do I recover the lost space so that I can maintain my hd capacity?
As a followup, I just used wondershare dvd creator to convert a 2g video file located on my ext hd to a playable dvd. Before I started, the available space on my C drive was 324g. At completion, the space dropped to 319g, even though the 2g video was never stored on the C drive. The shadow space remains limited to 2%, 9g, but the used space did go up from 1.6g to 2.2g, an increase usage of .6g, but remember my available hd space didn't drop by.6g, it dropped by 5g. I looked in the wondershare program folder with hidden file visible, and the whole folder is 50meg, so no large hidden file there. At this rate, my new hd will be full.

 

Rlee - Maybe this can help. Use a product like windirstat to show you a view of your harddrive. Large files stand out like a sore thumb. It has a 2-d view of your space and a tree view. Look for the large ones in the 2-d view. Mouse over and left click will show the folder or file name in the tree view. If you know its an old copy or video you are done with- right click in the tree view and you have the option to send to recycle bin or delete permentally. Hope you get your space back!


http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windirstat.html


How do I recover the lost space so that I can maintain my hd capacity?