Hard drive space missing (external drive)

[stagecustom]

Okay here's the story: I have an external hard drive along with my 60GB mac mini HD. Occasionally i will download torrents. I set in my torrent tracker to download files to my external hd. This has been working great up until now. I downloaded a 11GB file, and when i hit show in finder it came up in a folder called "External HD 1" external HD is the name of my external. Now i deleted this torrent out of the tracker, and currently can't find it anywhere with spotlight etc. It is no where on my external. and i'm pretty sure its on the main, because i remember the show finder thing having it in my main. problem is that i can't find it, and i am down to just over 1GB left on my main HD. i added up the following:

1. applications
2. Documents
3. System
4. Users
5. Library

These total to 36.32GBs

that being said. where is the rest of the space? i am 90% sure the 11GB of that torrent are somewhere. but its not in a findable place???

help me out.

thanks..

 

[Schroedinger]

I had a similar problem with torrents on an external drive. I had to get into the Terminal to figure it out. You need to go to your /volumes directory and start exploring. When you find the file, you can delete it.

If you're not comfortable mucking around in the Terminal, i'm not sure what approach to take.

 

[mklos]

Just throwing an idea out here. The file you were downloading didn't have a . in front of the name did it? (ex .Norton Internet Security.rar). In Unix, anything that has a . in front of the name is a hidden file. So since OS X runs Unix for the Core of its OS, it will also be hidden and not show anywhere in the Finder. You'll have to do what Schroedinger said and use the Terminal to search through your files and find it.

 

[TheAnswer]

Try retarting your computer.

 

[stagecustom]

Try retarting your computer.

haha good one. um what command should i use in terminal to search all volumes (as in both hard drives) or should i turn on hidden files for a bit. then find it. Just goes to show ya you learn a new thing everyday! i had no idea about the . in front.

thanks alot guys

 

[stagecustom]

I tried these terminal commands. maybe i'm doing something wrong, i copied the whole line of text, with the default and apple.com is that correct. i restarted finder through the force quit box, and nothing, the screen saver as desktop didn't go nor did the hidden applications. am i doing something wrong, also what command do i have to type in to find this hidden file?

 

[Schroedinger]

When I went exploring I actually just explored "manually," seeing what was in a given directory, then changing to a sub directory. If I remember correctly it wasn't that far in.

 

[stagecustom]

got everything working, THANKS guys. i have 18GB left now. a HUGE difference. really weird situation.