Ghost images getting bigger?

[StateGuy]

In my office we use XP Pro on Dell machines. When we get a new model in, we slap our copy (with license) of XP Pro (SP3) on there then do updates (Windows, A/V, various softwares). After that, we use Ghost to create an image on our image server.

The list of programs:
-Office 2003 (with 2007 Comp patches)
-Nero 8
-Irfanview
-Photo Story 3
-VNC
-PDF Creator
-Power DVD
-CA A/V
-Reader
-Java
-RealPlayer Codec
-Quicktime
-Shockwave
-Flash

With all of this, the last image I created (for the Dell Optiplex 780) was 8 gigs. By comparison, an image I created for the 755 in February was only 5-6gigs.

Why are my images getting so big so fast? Are empty spaces on the HDD copied as well if a defrag isn't done beforehand? (just shooting in the dark on that one)

 

[DelJo63]

consider: reading the description of the restore operation,

the MBR
the primary partition
and all other partitions​

get restored.
This kind of bothers me as the image could have only contained One-of-N partitions,
but the drive is reformatted and then recovered.

The MBR and the partition tables are not within any partition per se, so at least SOME
data is captured on a per structure basis - - carefully worded to avoid per sector,
as that would capture bad sectors that have been remapped (not the right thing to do).

IMO; your image sizes would reflect the raw size of the HDD from which they were captured
and may or may not have sensitivity to freespace