Stumped over "phantom" hidden file...

Anyone taking the time to answer, thank you in advance for your effort. It's much appreciated.
I'm using FCS 7.0.3 running on SL 10.6.8
I went to output an FCP movie (not a QT conversion) at current settings (ProRes 422, HD 1080p30, A/V, self contained, etc.). Stupidly, I set my desktop as the target disk for the output, started the process and walked away for a minute. When I came back, I got the "out of disk space" error so I figured I'd navigate to the desktop, delete the partial file, if any, and reset my target to try again. However, there was no partial file or any file with the name I had given to be found anywhere on my Mac but it ate up a substantial amount of my sytem disk space which, no matter what I do - trash prefs, restart, etc. - I cannot seem to recover. I'm thinking it could be a matter of "phantom" render files or something like that; I've had similar situations in the past where, after an FCS or full system restart or both, the supposedly used disk space is restored but not this time. I can't figure it out.
Now, after having trashed FCS prefs a couple of times, FCS fails to load.
Frustration level = Olympic
Again, any help is greatly appreciated and thank you for taking the time.
Stan
JuzMaintain Productions
Chatsworth, CA

Hi, Detlef. Thank you for responding.
I checked that folder already, emptied the trash, fixed system disk permissions, et al.
One note: the project I'm working on was cut on and migrated from another workstation. Also (and I just saw this this morning), I'm getting an error message about effects not loading and that they won't be applied to the final output. I'm assuming it's because my system doesn't have the plugs the original one does and, therefore, cannot finish the output... but where did the unfinished file go???
Very perplexing.

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