Reinstalled snow leopard again, but still no free space? HELP!

Hi all,
im still very new to all this so hope someone can explain it in simple terms for me! My macbook only has 20GB left and is chock full and running quite slow, so I went into mac store recently and the very helpful guys told me to do the following;
backed everything up to time machine external hard drive first, then they said to reinstall my installation disks to wipe everything and then reinstall snow leopard again. I clicked to option of erase and install as i thought that would overwrite everything, but after the few hours it took to do all this - i logged in again and everything is still on there!
how do i wipe everything on my computer safely (and make sure its backed up) to free up space?

Hi starbud;
Something sounds wrong here. It doesn't sound like you are working with a Snow Leopard DVD because with SL Apple dropped the erase & install option from their installer.
In order to do an erase and install with SL, you must open Disk Utility when booted from the DVD and erase the disk from there.
Having said all of that I think this plan you were told is totally futile because if you erase and install and then restore from Time Machine, your disk is going to be just as full as it was when you stated.
A better solution is to get a tool like OmniDiskSweeper and find out what is taking up all the space. Then delete what you can and move whatever you can't delete some place else.
Whatever you don't pick on the operating system. It is general the least of your problems. The heavy hitters are music, photos and videos.
Allan
Message was edited by: Allan Eckert

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