dumb question

[hurricane3]

I'am not a computer geek and really am far from being really computer savy ,but I have what is probley a dumb question.
I have a Dell Demension 8250 with a 200 gig hard drive.I also had a second 200 gig hard drive installed to store Norton Ghost backups.
After I had the second hard drive installed I went from 50% disk space to 32%,and it's been slowly but steadily dropping ever since.
I'am now down to 25% space at 46.76 mb.I havent downloaded anything and I've tried to delete some folders and uninstalled some programs ,but instead of gaining space I keep losing it.In two days for instance I went from 46.95 to 46.76.
I had the person who installed the second drive check the connections and have had it to another repair place and everything checks out ok.
The second guy said this is normal and disabled the indexing sevice ,deleted a few files he said I didn't need and installed a program called CCleaner.First time I ran it my space jumped to 46.98 ,but now when I run it I lose space.
My computer has been checked for virus'es,trojens and everything else and I run scans like AdAware and spybot,and registery cleaners every day and my computer is completely clean.
So basically I'am asking if this is normal ,and can I slow down the loss rate,because according to Windows you must have at least 15% free space to defrag.The last guy said I should disable system restore ,but this has saved my butt too many times and I hate to do this.
Also I'am thinking of getting a larger harddrive and transfering everything on my primary drive to this but I've heard windows XP(sevice pack 2) doesnt like large hard drives,although I really don't know what this means.
I'am sorry this is so long and for you guys is a dumb question ,but I'd like to know how can you delete files and still lose space or do nothing and still lose space.
Again sorry this is so long but I wanted to give you as much info as possible ,though I'am sure I've forgotton somthing.
If you wade through this book I've written ,do you have any ideas? Thankyou

[glc]

It's system restore. You can adjust the amount of space it can take - and you can use the advanced functions in Disk Cleanup to delete all but the most recent restore point.

You can put as big a drive as you want in there. If it is handling a 200 gig okay, it will handle a 750 gig.

[hurricane3]

Thankyou so much for taking the time to read through all that stuff I wrote ,concerning loseing disk space.
At first when I only reduced the amount of space System Restore is to use,(I cut it to 7% or 13811 MB ,Windows didn't like it.When I rebooted I got a black screen whith an error message that said(and I don't rember the wording)that the system did not reboot correctly ,and I had to reboot from the power button.
Then when I got to my desktopit It said windows had encountered a problem and had to close ,but I wasn't running any programs and it didn't close windows.Were it said to click to see the problem ,it said I had a trojen.
I ran all my scans and found nothing and the computer was running fine,but instead of gaing desk space it went down from 46.78 to46.66.
Then I ran disk cleanup advanced options to only keep my latest restore point, and my disk space jumped to 27% from 25% at 50.53MB so I have finally recovered space thanks to your advice.
I have since rebooted five or six times with no error messages and the computer is running fine.
Thank you so much for your advice,now I can put off buying that bigger hard drive a while longer. Thanks again your the best

[hurricane3]

I guess I spoke too soon when I thought my problem of loseing disk space had been solved.
I have disk cleanup set up too only save my last system restore point ,and at first I gained disk space,but now I'am slowly losing it again even though I haven't downloaded any programs.You can read my last post to see what all I've done.
In two days I went from 53.00MG to52.98 mg.Am I overreacting?Will I sooner or later lose all my hard drive space even though I'am not downloading anything?Is this normal for Windows XP?Is ther anyway I can stop or slow down the loss rate?
Or am I losing it at such a small rate that it will take years to get to the critial 15% point?I'd like to keep my computer for as long as I can but this thing has me worried I'am going to lose all my hard drive space on my C drive. Thanks and forgive me if I'am being too concerned about this. Thanks

[glc]

You are overreacting. Big hard drives are cheap and easy to install.