rye9 said:
Sorry for the delay...I'm still at work
Go to the Desktop, and press [CMD]-[F] on the keyboard. This brings up the Find tool, much like the Find tool in pre-Tiger systems. Now that I've checked it out, it appears that it won't let you search for files only a few hours old...must be at least a day.
Either way, first remove all search conditions except for one. Click on the
Volume "your_hd_name" button near the top of the Find window. Below it, there are search parameters. For the parameters, select
"Created" -> "Within Last" -> "1" -> "Days". The search should begin automatically, and items will appear as they are found.
I just ran the search on my computer, and found 233 files created within the last day. Most of them are random documents that the system uses. Since so much of your HD space disappeared, there are a few possibilities (in no particular order):
1) You'll get hundreds of thousands of random system files that were created.
2) There'll be a handful of huge files that you didn't create.
3) You'll see nothing except the normal files, which means one of two things:
a) The files are invisible and the search won't detect them.
b) Our assumption that files were created is completely bogus and there's something else screwy going on. Perhaps a damaged HD, but hopefully not (unless you're under warranty and want a new HD for your iBook).
Sorry I can't be of more help
Good luck with it, and all that!