Help please!

I formatted 50Gigs of my 80Gig drive using NTFS. Then using an external video analog to digital converter, I recorded a 2 hour tape onto my drive. This used up about 22Gigs : 11-2 gig AVI files. With the other little stuff on this part of the drive, it adds up to about 24 Gigs used.

This morning I joined two of the 2 Gig files together. I made an error in the program and it made a 26 Gig file which filled up this drive. Yikes! I thought I was just going to get a 4 Gig file. Whoops.
So I deleted the 26 Gig file by highlighting and hitting the delete button. I got a message saying that it wouldn't fit in the recycle bin and I could just delete it. Which I did. Then I transferred MPEG files from this drive partition to another FAT32 partition to free up more space.

When I right click on the drive, it gives me:
Used space 48.4 GB
Free space 398MB
Capacity: 48.8GB

I have 11 AVI files that add up to about 22 Gig
and one folder of 26MB. Now my drive is full (and Yes, the recycle bin is empty). This does not add up to 48.4 GB. It acts as though it is mirroring the drive or something.

How do I get the "hidden" file (not there, I checked the hidden files) off this drive.

Windows XP Home
WD 80Gig Hard Drive
Athlon 1800+
MSI KT3 Ultra 2

I hope someone can help. Thanks!

Are you running Norton Systemworks or some other utilities suite?

It could be that you have some sort of "delete protection" on...if so check through the third-party programs options for how it makes its backups...

Hi MJC,

Yup, I have Norton SystemWorks and it has the 26Gig file in a protected Recycle Bin that I can't get to. Grrr.

You gave me the correct words to use in the help/unhelpful section of Norton. The program doen'st work the way the help says it is supposed to. The file was not in CleanSweep at all. I only found it after clicking on box after screen after box. And I finally found a screen that gave me the "file usage" Who knows where the program decides where the files are going to go.

I truly find this program very unhelpful and only loaded it on my new system for the virus protection. I couldn't find how to load only the Virus protection without the rest of the program. It didn't give me any choices.

Bottom line, I right clicked on the recycle bin and found a place to be able to delete the "protected" files. The most frustrating thing is that that particular place on the right click was not available before.

Thank you for the help,
Dazed and less frustrated.

Because you had it installed, and the options where the default ones.....and you hadn't actually gone in an activated it yet.

Run through you options/preferences and therr should be some way of disabling it.......since I don't use anything from Norton, except Ghost, I'm not sure of where to look.