Disk Utility misreading available disk space

Disk Utility and Finder tells me that I only have 8 GB of available space left on my 150GB hard drive. I knew this amount was wrong and I tried OMNI Disc Sweeper that confirmed that I"m only using 52GB of the hard drive. How do I rectify this and have the computer recognize the correct amount of available hard drive space?

You could try and see if the boot installer disc's version of Disk Utility
on the Installer disc of the OS X version you are running, can repair
this disk. It may be a simple matter of how the system reads any
tags on the old data on the drive which was set to be over-written by
the system. A good third party disk utility for your version of OS X
should be able to check and repair most issues if Apple's Disk Utility
may balk at some of the more tedious issues.
Also, if you boot into SafeBoot mode and then run the installed version
of Disk Utility and have it 'repair disk permissions' then when it is done,
quit Disk Utility, and restart the computer normally; that may help and
is non-invasive. And it usually does more good and no harm.
If there actually is a problem on the low-level of the hard disk drive
which may be causing this capacity available volume read error, one
of the cures short of a third party disk utility such as Disk Warrior or
Drive Genius2, using Apple Disk Utility, could be accomplished if
you happened to already be in the habit of making and using full
computer clones of the entire hard drive content on to an external
hard disk drive. Then you could have your full backup, and be able
to totally wipe the hard disk drive, zero-overwrite the old data, and
reformat the hard disk drive (and use repair disk) from the booted
installer disc's Disk Utility; then move back a full clone of your Mac.
Forgoing that option, if what you already have can do the job, then
you can save the other choices and investments for another day.
Good luck & happy computing !

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