Hard Drive Space Eaten, but where? - 10.6

I can't figure out where 120 GB of Hard Drive Space has gone.  I've scoured other similar threads, but none like this:
1 - 451 GB are listed as being used (in Finder/About My Mac/Whatsize/Activity Monitor/etc)
2 - outside programs, including WhatSize, list less.  For example, Whatsize (which I paid for), only finds 331 GB of used space (but lists 451 GB as "used" in the upper left corner).
3 - commands like sudo du -hd1 only show me using 284 GB.
I'd like to find WHERE the 120 GB is being eaten before trying to figure out WHY.  But I got into the root directory in finder anyway, and found nothing unusual. 
More information - I'm using Snow Leopard, I was using Lion earlier but got tired of "Out of Memory" errors (when only 430 / 500 GB were shown, but all sources, as being used).  I erased the hard drive in Disk Utility and did a clean install, last week.  At that time, I was "using" 410 GB after reinstalling files- so 40 GB have gone missing just this week (I'm not doing much - No, it isn't because iTunes or iPhoto are making copies of things).  I should say, overall, the system is screaming fast and working like lightning and I'm happier (compared to Lion). 
And finally - the first thing that happened when I bought this laptop was that I had a logic board failure.  Literally one day out of the box. So maybe this computer is a lemon.  This is my first Mac too. 

Where  did  my  Disk  Space  go?
Slimming your hard drive
OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.
Rule of thumb: You should never let your hard drive get to where you have only 10-15% of space left.
Mac OS X (10.6.7)
Use Software Update to update your os to 10.6.8 and anything else that needs to be updated.

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