XP problem deleting files

I am having a very weird problem, It seems that when I delete things, the space they took up remains on the hard drive. The other day I had a post about a large temp internet folder and I think this is why that happened. I noticed this because I was rendering a video and the final video turned out to be like 20 GB (by accident, used wrong setting :) ), and when I deleted the video it said it was too big for the recycle bin, and I told it to just delete it. But my hard drive still has that extra 20GB of space used. I restarted, thinking it might not reckognize it yet, emptied the recycle bin, and also ran a defrag, but that space is still being used. Anyone know how to clean that space off?

You can use Restoration to get back files you deleted, it will also wipe your HD clean of all files you've deleted.

I don't delete files anymore, if I want something deleted it's because I know I don't want it. I use Eraser instead. It wipes the HD(can't get files back) clean. You can try that to wipe your vacant clusters.

Both programs are free, read the instruction well !, sure don't want your HD to disappear ;)

For fixing incorrect reporting of drive space, running "CHKDSK" from a command prompt might help.

I found a setting in nortons, it was set to cache everything that was deleted so I could restore anything, I had to purge that cache file and it cleared it out. thanks for your replies. I am suprised it cached a 20GB file.

Don't be. The damn things a system hog. Shame it's so sucessfull, the worst buy-out in the industry was when they got Symantec, who produced a fine range of streamlined apps, which became bloatware under new ownership. Such is life.