C Drive critically low after seperate drive file transfer?

[CHOUT]

I have a WD 120 & 80 GB hard drive. The 120 is
partitioned into 4 (C, D, E, F) drives and the 80 into 2
(G, H). Well I was decompressing a 4.7 gb file on my F
drive and all of a sudden my C drive went from having 4.5
gb of free space left on it to 200kb!! Needless to say
the file could not finish decompressing as Windohs
stopped it. So I transferred that file over the my 80 gb
H drive which has 28 out of 34 gb free on it. I tried to
decompress that same file on the 80 and the same thing
happened!! Now my C drive is stuck at 50 mb free and in
the defragment software, it's 90% fragmented...after
defragmenting!!!! I have restarted 3 times and did a disk
and system restore clean but nothing. I am still stuck on
50 mb free!! Any clues? How can I get my 4.5 gb free back
on my C drive and decompress that file on my 80 gb?
Thanks to everyone for their help and expertice!

 

[Pegasus]

I have a WD 120 & 80 GB hard drive. The 120 is
partitioned into 4 (C, D, E, F) drives and the 80 into 2
(G, H). Well I was decompressing a 4.7 gb file on my F
drive and all of a sudden my C drive went from having 4.5
gb of free space left on it to 200kb!! Needless to say
the file could not finish decompressing as Windohs
stopped it. So I transferred that file over the my 80 gb
H drive which has 28 out of 34 gb free on it. I tried to
decompress that same file on the 80 and the same thing
happened!! Now my C drive is stuck at 50 mb free and in
the defragment software, it's 90% fragmented...after
defragmenting!!!! I have restarted 3 times and did a disk
and system restore clean but nothing. I am still stuck on
50 mb free!! Any clues? How can I get my 4.5 gb free back
on my C drive and decompress that file on my 80 gb?
Thanks to everyone for their help and expertice!

You appear to believe that defragging a disk will free up
disk space. It does not - it simply joins the various fragments
that make up a file to one contiguous block.

I suspect your decompression action created a huge temporary
file. Have a look at your temp folders and delete this file - you
don't need it!

About your decompression attempts: Do you know how big
the file was in its original condition?

 

[CHOUT]

No no, I realize that defrag does not free up space, it
was merely to show that something big is in my C drive
causing the fragmentation. I looked into my
C:/Windows/temp folder and there is only 4.8 mb in total
in there but the C drive size still remains (50 mb). The
original size of the winrar'ed file was 4.67 gb and after
I decompressed it, it was an image file. Then of course I
have to decompress that image file to get the files
inside out. Those files inside are also 4.67 gb as well.
Not sure why the double compression when it gained no
more free space? THe odd thing is, why after it has been
transfered to my seperate 80 gb, does it still take up
space on my C drive? My Winrar is not installed on my C
drive also, it's on the D drive. Any other ideas where
the temp file would be? Thanks for the help thus far. =)

 

[Guest]

OK..I found it in my Documents and Settings folder. It
has been deleted but when I started to extract the file
again on my seperate 80gb drive, it fills up my Documents
and Settings Temp folder all over again!? How stupid of a
desing is this? So what about all those poor people who
set up a smaller drive for their C drive? Can they never
extract or transfer a large file because of this foolish
design or? Can this be changed? Can the Temp folder be
relocated? Thanks!

 

[Pegasus]

OK..I found it in my Documents and Settings folder. It
has been deleted but when I started to extract the file
again on my seperate 80gb drive, it fills up my Documents
and Settings Temp folder all over again!? How stupid of a
desing is this? So what about all those poor people who
set up a smaller drive for their C drive? Can they never
extract or transfer a large file because of this foolish
design or? Can this be changed? Can the Temp folder be
relocated? Thanks!

You can set the location of your temp folder via the Control
Panel / System / Advanced / Environmental variables. Be
careful: If you set it to a drive that might not always be there
then you could cause some serious system problems!

Many programs use the %temp% folder to store temporary
files. Others allow you to set them manually. Have a look at
your file decompressor (Zip?), and perhaps at the FAQs for
this product.