Deleted files still using up disk space

Long story. Transferred 30Gb of mpegs from my wife's laptop to mine via firewire target disk mode on wife's machine. Logged off to disconnect and when I unplugged, got the disk wasn't ejected error. I thought it was. I had deleted the 30G from my wife's hd before disconnecting. Now, the files are gone from the desktop, but the disk space didn't free up. Still shows only 6 GB free. If I hook it up as a target disk, it shows the 36 free, but when running on its own, only 6 is free. I've repaired permissions, executed all maintenance scripts, repaired disk, verified disk, and run every test in Tech Tool Pro 4 with no help. Turned on invisible files, force emptied the trash with Cocktail, still no help. If you add up the size on all the folders, it gives 30GB less than the drive itself says is used. Where are those files and how do I get the space back?

Sure hope you aren't afraid of Unix...
From the wife's Mac, open Terminal (applications / utilities / Terminal)
For all of these type in's I say to do, do whats inside the quotes and not the quotes themselves. Or do a copy and paste if you aren't sure on a letter... And press Return after you type them in.
Type in "cd /"
Type in "ls -al"
You should see a .Trashes in here at the top of the list.
Type in "cd .Trashes"
Type in "ls" here and see what you get. It will probably be a folder named 501 for the admin account from your Mac.
If so, do an "rm -R /.Trashes/501/"
and watch your disk space.
If it complains to you that you don't have permissions, you will have to type in "sudo rm -R /.Trashes/501/"

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    Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

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    Sure hope you aren't afraid of Unix...
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