Missing Space on Hard Drive

I'm going to condense what I'm trying to say because my last attempt didn't post. grr.

I have a 60 GB hard drive and I have Tiger OS.

My startup disk was full and after burning and deleting all my personal files the most space I freed up was 10 GB. I decided to do an Erase and Install of my OS X. I've now done it twice and the most space I've had after reinstalling is 39.4 GB, and this is before installing all the updates.

From the research I've done it looks like the OS X install is only around 4 GB. So where is all the other space that should be available on my hard drive?!

Help!

Don't take my word for it... but when you reinstalled it you did not delete the previous coppy of the OS ? so now you have 3 OS's of Tiger each with 4 gig = 12gig + When it the OS says it is 4gig it never is...

You need to format the HDD to get the full 60 gig back

You might be right. What is the Erasing and Installing doing then? And how do I format the hard drive?

An "Erase and Install" will wipe the entire HD. "Format" is more of a Dos/Windows term while in OSX you "Erase" the drive.....same result.

Keep in mind that a 60gb drive is not really 60GB.....it's about 57-58GB. A fresh install of Leopard (yes I know you're installing Tiger) including iLife works out to about 20GB so from what you're saying, it sounds about right.

Might want to consider a HD upgrade.

The free space though didn't change between the first and second Erase and Install, so it doesn't seem like I'm stacking copies of Tiger. But maybe I am.

Yes, I'm actually at 55.9 according to Disk Utility. And, believe me, I'm looking into upgrading. I guess if what you say is true about iLife and Leopard being 20 GB then, that might just be the issue. .sigh. I guess I better start shopping for some upgrades.