Bad File Descriptor in /dev/fd/3, and 94Gb of disk space missing

Question

I noticed a few days ago, possibly as the result of a recent kernel panic, that I have a large chunk of hard drive space missing. The Finder reports that I have approximately 89Gb of free space, but using "df" reports that there is approximately 178Gb free. Using "du" doesn't report any unexpected huge files, so I tried running GrandPerspective. In addition to the usual file usage and free space, this shows a single 94Gb block of "miscellaneous used space".
I then booted into Single User mode to run fsck on the startup drive. This reported several errors, and took 3 passes to repair the directory structure, but didn't recover the missing space. I have subsequently run TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior on the startup drive (both of which found various minor errors), but the 94Gb still refuses to show itself.
I then tried using "find" to look for single large files, using "sudo find / -size [phone]" (anything larger than 90Gb), and I get the following errors:
find: /dev/fd/3: Bad file descriptor
find: /dev/fd/4: Not a directory
find: /dev/fd/5: Not a directory
After searching Google, a "Bad file descriptor" error points to an inode issue, that fsck cannot fix, but I don't know enough (read: anything) about inodes to risk running the clri command to zero the problem inode.
Short of blanking the startup disk and installing from scratch (not an attractive option), is there anything I can do to fix the broken inode and recover the missing space?
Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

Drawing Business wrote:
I then tried using "find" to look for single large files, using "sudo find / -size [phone]" (anything larger than 90Gb), and I get the following errors:
find: /dev/fd/3: Bad file descriptor
find: /dev/fd/4: Not a directory
find: /dev/fd/5: Not a directory
This is not an error and always happens with find unless you exclude the /dev hierarchy from the search. (Interestingly this seems to have gone away with 10.5??)
To locate your missing space, try WhatSize. Another alternative which I have not used personally is Disk Inventory X.
As an additional point, with 10.4 it is actually better to use Disk Utility, since it does more than fsck: Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck, quote:
Note: If you're using Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you should use Disk Utility instead of fsck, whenever possible.