odd free space

You guys wanna hear something really weird? I check the free space on my computer last night, about 5.15 GB free, same as what it usually is (or at least what it has been for about 2 months now). Shut down my computer, turn it on again this morning. Didn't do any sort of scandisk or defrag, didnt play any games, didnt install or uninstall anything. Pretty much it has sat here with AIM open, and when i just checked it, it now says i have 6.87 GB free. My hard drive had problems a while back with giving me less and less free space every day (found out it was because of my computer freezing up all the time and having lost file fragments), but i have never had more free space than what i though. I guess i wont complain because it is a good thing, but if anyone knows why it would do this, i would appreciate some sort of explanation. Also, im using windows 98 SE.

Could be your Virtual Memory swap file settings. The swap file grows and shrinks with use.

well, i let windows manage all that, but still, what would make it change over 1.5 GB when i wasnt doing anything?

ok, now im really confused (and quite ticked). I defragged my computer last night, hoping that maybe it would give me even more space. Turns out that now after defragging, im down to right about 2 GB free. How the heck did fall almost 5 GB just from defragging, which is supposed to free up space? I would really appreciate some answers on this.

You're running fat32 on that drive. Run scandisk on it. Problems can crop up with fat32 that make it report free space wrong.