Bootcamp not fully returning my parition?

[llee8820]

Hi, im think im having trouble with bootcamp but im not entirely sure since i am new to mac. So any help would be appreciated.

It goes like this, i dowloaded bootcamp and installed windows xp several times and unparitioning it to my original 1 parition several times. Maybe around 3 times. However, each time when i try to return it back to 1 partition again, i think bootcamp is not fully deleting all my windows file. I suspect this because my mac can orginally holds 60gb, and each i install windows and delete it my memory seems to decrease. Currently i have 20gb out of my gb. I checked my memory everywhere of my applications and can only find that maybe i have about 17gb memory that i actually used ( downloading and installing the such). So where did all the rest of my memory go? Is it possible that bootcamp is not deleting all my windows file? If so, how do do that? Thank you.

 

[fryke]

It shouldn't be this way. However, there are some things to consider:

1.) You won't get 60 GB out of that drive when it's formatted. For one thing, GB ≠ GB. Harddrive makers count 1 MB as 1000 KB instead of 1024. Or something like that. My 100 GB drive gives me 92.48 GB when formatted. That could be part of the reason. So: Go to Finder and "Get Info" on your harddrive to see what your formatted drive actually has.

2.) You can check where drive space may be wasted using OmniDiskSweeper. -> http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/7402 ... (The free version allows you to check for sizes, only its nice big delete button doesn't work unless you register the app, but you can delete stuff in Finder or Terminal if necessary.) Make sure _not_ to delete stuff you don't know anything about. If something strange (and big) shows up, post the filenames/foldernames here, so we can maybe help you deciding whether you should delete them.

I thought I had a third point, but I can't remember it right now...