recovering 'lost' disk space

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I'm new to mac osx, and have run into a space problem on my hard drive and am hoping someone can help. I somehow managed to create a 40gb .sparse file (I think it had something to do with filevault) on a 80gb hard drive. I moved the file to the trash and then emptied it, rebooted, but now now the space is being reported as used even though it doesn't show up in any of the disk inventory tools I've tried.

I tried doing all of the things in this post http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243, but still no luck. Does anybody have any idea how I can recover this space without reinstalling the OS. It's using over half my hard drive, and I can't find it!
 
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Just a silly thought. A file named .sparse is an "invisible" file. Are you sure that your effort to trash the file succeeded?
 
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Thanks to both of you. I initially used DiskInventoryX to discover the file. Now, when I open DiskInventoryX it shows this:
Capacity 74.2 GB
Used: 60.5 GB
Free: 13.7 GB

But then when I open the volume and it finishes analyzing, it shows used as being 18 GB, with the application one being the biggest at 4.1 GB. No sign of that .sparse file I thought I deleted anywhere, not even in the user .trash or the system .trashes.

Any other ideas? It seems to have let me delete the file. How can I tell if it wasn't really trashed and is still stuck somewhere?
 
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Unfortunately, this smacks of a file system error. I would start by going to Disk Utility, selecting your hard drive, and doing the Verify Disk operation. Hopefully this may turn up the error and even correct it.

If not, you may need to shell out for some "heavy armor", Disk Warrior, which will do a nice job of this for you. See: http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior.

Another tool in this category is Techtool Pro. See: http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=48

Proceed with caution in all cases however. It is all too easy to quickly answer a dialog button without carefully considering the question being asked, and trash your data. I would advise backing up all of your personal data before embarking on this fix effort, just in case it goes awry and you have to re-install.
 
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Hey trpmonkey how do i free up space on my Hard drive i know the whole language thing is a big way, but i dont know how to do that how else?
 

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