reclaiming space on the windows drive

Hello,

Thanks in advance.

I'm pretty new to DB. Running 2008 MS SQL on 2008 R2 64 bit.

I'm running a security application that generates a lot of events. I have gone in over the past couple days and deleted large numbers of old events in an effort to reclaim space on the D: drive where the SQL DB for this app resides. I did this throught the app itself... through its GUI front end.

I'm not having any impact. There is not a file on the same drive where the deleted events are being directed to. If all these events are going away, why does my used space on the drive not shrink?

I came at it from another tack, creating sql queries to delete old events from the same app. I did this through queries in the SQL mgmt studio. The tasks (multiple) completed successfully, and the report on the # of rows 'affected' showed that it was a substantial number.

But, same result. No decrease in the windows drive space being used. Any tips?

Thanks again.