HDD Free Space Random Increase

Hi. So I was wondering if someone here with a little bit more knowledge of the whole free space thing on an HDD could answer me this question. For a while, after installing many games, owning lots of HD videos and a huge iTunes library, my Windows partition which carries the XP system as well as all of my data (116 GB) was down to about 12.9-13.2 (fluctuates a lot depending when I do a dump of the windows temp/browser cache to regain some space). I was playing with a tool which I absolutely love called Glary Utilities. What GU does is contain many tools in one app you can use to speed your PC up. The most important to me are the registry defrag/cleaner which usually 99% of the time fixes errors should they arise, and also speeds up the PC after time when the registry gets errors. All registries get errors, scan yours and be surprised. Anyways, lets get down to it. I had 13.2 GB free (approximately) last night and playing with GU before going to bed I let it "Wipe Free Space" on my HDD to see if I could get any speed boosts. Well.. come to find out tonight, right now (1 night later) by checking my drive usage... no speed was noticed but I seem to have 19.8 GB of space free on my HDD. Sorta freaked out.. I checked my documents folder which is the most important folder. It contains all of my stuff I've been building up for years. Music, Videos, Pictures, Various Program installers...etc..GW is also in this directory. Last backup on Saturday showed 49.8 GB to be accounted for and the active data I have now that I backup every week is now like 49.9 GB (to be expected, of course...). All of my Steam games are accounted for, GW (which is in my docs) and all of my CoD PC games are accounted for.

I thought maybe my drive is messed up or windows is and it's giving me the wrong info..it happens..but if this is genuine how could wiping the freespace on my HDD have given me 6 GB of free space back? I can ponder a bit and think that it somehow rebuilt the end of the drive space where the active space meets the free space somehow..but I'm honestly lost here... It's cool that I got space back..but how in the f did it happen?

Could be clearing the recycle bin or deleting some other group of temp files?

Yea, my guess would either be removal of temp files or clearing out your recycle bin. Temp files are created by programs that don't want to store info in RAM, and are usually deleted when the program ends. However, sometimes they aren't (Microsoft Word, I'm looking at you and my documents folder that is 2x bigger then it should be) - This causes a LOT of lost space, especially if you don't delete these often.

Well, I clear that temp stuff as much as I can, always did and clear my Recycle Bin too, not sure what it was but since then I have restarted my comp and it's still 19 GB free so I'm gonna wing it and say I got randomz space back.

been so long since I messed with XP.

just sounds like you purged your old system restore/shadow copies. you will get back alot of HD space doing that.

can be done 2 ways (that I know w/o 3rd party progs)
1. start--->run--->type: cleanmgr

then go thru disk cleanup options/more options tab and get rid of what you like.
the more options tab is where you get rid of restores.

2. Computer--->left click(drive letter--->right click--->properties--->disk cleanup (button near pie-chart)

what everyone said above, also defragging a seriously fragmented HDD can give you a fiar bit of space back as well - did that occur?

As Flubber said, GU may have deleted some old restore points - they can take up a lot of space. It may also have adjusted the max amount of space the Restore files can take up and/or the size of XP's virtual memory.
And also, what Elder said.

Sounds all pretty reasonable to me, it's a shame XP cons people out of HDD space that otherwise most people have no Idea where it went. I know a great bit about computers, but when I had 13 GB before.....i believed it, now I'm more wary of Windows than I ever have before. lol.

I'll also do what Elder said and defrag. I haven't defragged in a while, and with all the programs I install/uninstall, constant cleanups of files manually...I'm guessing this drive is hurting bad.