Insufficient available space, where has my .odt file gone?

[Appletise]

I write up a daily update on openoffice .odt, I tried to save it other day, but it said there was insufficient space. Indeed available space had gone down from ~26GB down to ~49kB, after keeping my mbpr on for ~ couple of hours? I don't understand why there is a drain on my HD space, as now there is 10% free available space in my 250GB SSD HD.
either way, l can't seem to find my .odt file anymore. it is no longer recoverable. could it be hiding somewhere that I can't find? and good idea to prevent it in future when available space is running real low, is to save it to my external HD?

 

[chrfr]

I write up a daily update on openoffice .odt, I tried to save it other day, but it said there was insufficient space. Indeed available space had gone down from ~26GB down to ~49kB, after keeping my mbpr on for ~ couple of hours? I don't understand why there is a drain on my HD space, as now there is 10% free available space in my 250GB SSD HD.
either way, l can't seem to find my .odt file anymore. it is no longer recoverable. could it be hiding somewhere that I can't find? and good idea to prevent it in future when available space is running real low, is to save it to my external HD?

Bad things happen to computer when their storage fills.
Any number of things could cause what you saw– it could be an out of control log file that grows rapidly, or something that's used up all your memory and caused the computer to generate many temporary swap files.
You'll probably be unable to recover that file, if it ever saved at all. Yes, if your internal disk fills, trying to save to an external drive is worth a try, though it still may not work.