Why does LW take that much space (after a while). Seems ridiculous. Failing to clear things after finishing? Is it storing everything that has been uploaded? What?

Sometines LW fails to remove completed files from the Incomplete folder. Under the Library tab, select Incomplete, and have a look. Files with 0 bytes are there so LW knows what you've already dl'd.

It's not that. Besides why would that be held in RAM (random access memory). That's held on the hard drive. I have 42 MB in Incomplete, all in order.

Sorry, most of the time the "space" referred to is on disk.

Tying up RAM? That's a new one. I'll spare you my speculation. The more tech savvy among us my be able to help if you post your specs.
System details - help us to help you (click on blue link)

In Windows taskmanager it gives % CPU (central processing unit) usage plus Memory usage. Memory can't be on disc can it? I've run out of disc space sometimes but memory (RAM?) still exists.

From those questions I assumed that by "space" you were referring to disk space (obviously, I had overlooked your headline). You next asked specifically about RAM, which suggests a different problem. (And no, RAM is not on disk.)

If you feel that it is a significant problem, then you can further help yourself by supplying information about your machine.


It must be time for my medication.

Anyway my LW is 4.18.3. I think your tech-savvy will confirm they don't need my computer specs for this question.
Does Java load as part of LW, so it's counted as part of LW's size. LW is only ~30MB so is it unnecessary space use? After it starts it creeps up to ~77MB. after some use it can be !!0MB.

LW is a ram hungry program. And the more incomplete downloads & shared files you have, the more ram LW uses. The longer you have LW running the more it may use. The more search tabs you have open, the more ram it uses, and the more LW windows you have open then probably also adds to ram use. Java is not super efficient at ram management. And there is a known issue with Java having problems releasing memory. This is more so a problem on the mac OS platform, but also applies in a lesser way to Windows users. Generally speaking the later the version of Java, the better it manages RAM. Such things as not using or disabling the media player may or may not also help reduce ram use. The busier LW becomes, potentially the more ram it may use. Oh .. and setting LW to clear downloads & uploads after completing can also assist in reducing ram use. Running in Ultrapeer mode may add a small % more use as well. Included in that list is most of the performance options (under advanced settings) & OOB (under speed settings.) Using the Find Sources or Resume function is a known way of increasing stress on LW.

tHANKS. 77mb LOOKS LIKE THE SIZE OF lw AND jAVA PROGRAMS COMBINED. sO DOES THE lw SIZE IN TASKMANAGER INCLUDE jAVA? wOULDN'T HAVE THOT SO. aS FOR THE REST OF SPACE, LOG OF UPLOADS DOESN'T TAKE MUCH TEXT SPACE. sO COULD IT BE SAVING ALL THE FILES IT UPLOADED IN ram AFTER FINISHING?
It's certainly not loading my shared files into RAM, and surely not my Incomplete.
(As for cap lock I'm not rewriting this)

The technical side to it I'm not sure of the details. It's more-so the information such as I 'think' such as 'perhaps' the hashing or storage of the information in Java. That would make sense for Shared files at the very least.

On Mac OSX, the system uses a lot of virtual memory, the VM usage of java increases the longer LW is open, also increases with all those things i suggested in my previous post. I'm not sure how this differs on windows.