Where is my free hard drive space

Question

I have a 120gb hard drive on my macbook. It only says that I have 1.5gb of free space left. However when I add up the space taken by the top folders (Applications, Developer, Library, System and Users) I come to a total of about 63 gb) Where is the rest of the free space?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Well, having a Mactop that's got only a 40GB drive (but a Gig'O RAM), I know some things about getting back HD space. I'm saving up for a 7200RPM big drive or a top-level MacBook Pro, whichever's cheaper by the time I get a few thousand pennies put together.
Omni Disk Sweeper is the best for finding file hogs you've forgotten about & bloated folders you've lost track of the increasing fatness of (my own Download folder, for example, which I've been meaning to comb through & find the DMG dupes of apps I've already installed & don't need the DMGs for anymore). And running ODS for the first time is a REAL eye opener. It'll make ya a better more concientious maid.
More suggestions:
Run Onyx & dump all your caches, or a util that does that. Caches hold LOTS o stuff. And Tiger's got all kinds of caches. Especially big are the browser caches, of course.
Run a util like Monolingual & excise all the languages except the one you want from all your apps you've got, automagically. HUGE increases in HD space there.
Another space-getter is to run a util like XSlimmer which will dump all the Intel code out of all your apps, leaving only the PPC code. This procedure USUALLY keeps the apps running ok; however, occassionaly an app apparently needs the Intel stuff, or shares it with the PPC code; i.e., a few apps won't run properly (or at all) after doing this. But that's no big deal...... Most apps run just fine after getting Intel surgeried cut out of 'em. And using XSlimmer, you can deselect those apps you just don't want getting messed with at all. But, if you plan on going Intel, & migrating any of those slimmed apps over, well, they won't work there & you'll have to DL & reinstall those apps. Probably best way to go, anyway....
Eliminate duplicate files. For example, MP3's you might have in some folder that iTunes auto-copies when they're, say, double-clicked on & they wind up getting opened by iTunes which you've got set as the default app (change the default opener particularly or globally in the MP3 file's info box). If iTunes doesn't have that MP3 indexed into its database then it'll make a copy of it & it then puts that copy into its own folder. So then ya got 2 of the same thing. Leave it if ya want it that way though, of course.
To auto-dump dupes, Tidy Up!, for example, will do that for you.
Happy House Cleaning!
kk