Why is My Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop Using More Hard Drive Space Than Expected?

[fowlish]

Hello all. I have a dell inspiron 1525 laptop, and I've had it for about 4 months. I've been downloading music here and there, but nothing too major. Earlier this week I realized that my computer had used about 70gb of memory, and I had no idea where it was. So I downloaded a disk analyzer to try and figure it out. I had no luck in locating 60gb of my hard drive. So I reformatted my hard drive, and began downloading my programs again(iTunes, AIM, bittorrent) It seems like everytime I download something my computer uses way more memory on my hard drive than necessary. For example, when I download something that is approximately 300mb, it uses like 3gb. I have no idea what the hell is going on. Can someone please help?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

When you say "memory" I assume you mean disk space? Did you do a test download before installing anything? Are you running XP or Vista?