Trash emptied due to unrelated terminal command, Storage not freed up PLEASE HELP

[tstirling22]

Hello, i am currently running on 10.6.8 snow leopard.

I was looking at some common terminal commands and decided to try one. It ended up deleting all the items in my trash, which pissed me off but i didn't really care that much in the end.

However, one really big problem came about. Im not sure if any storage space was freed up at all when i did this. It seems that my computer's free hard drive space is the same as before the trash was deleted.

I don't care about retreiving the deleted items, but how can i get all that lost hard drive space back?? i feel like an idiot right now.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Did you restart yet?
What exact command did you use?

To find out, where you hard drive capacity is being used, you can use the following free applications:

• DiskInventory X
• OmniDiskSweeper
• JDisk Report
• GrandPerspective

Maybe try a combination of several, if you still can't find the "missing" capacity.

 

[Intell]

Make a new folder and move it to the Trash. Then empty the trash via Finder. It'll free up your disc space.

 

[chrono1081]

Make a new folder and move it to the Trash. Then empty the trash via Finder. It'll free up your disc space.

Thats a neat trick! (Not that I have a use for it but I enjoyed reading about it )

 

[Intell]

Thats a neat trick! (Not that I have a use for it but I enjoyed reading about it )

Sometimes Finder thinks the Trash is empty, but it really isn't. This can happen if something was improperly put into the Terminal or Finder crashes when emptying the Trash. Putting something in the Trash makes Finder see it as not empty and will allow it to properly empty it and recover the missing disk space.

 

[tstirling22]

hmm. odd. i did what you said but it didn't recover missing disk space. and you mentioned that incorrect terminal entries can cause this to happen. and i did recently put something into terminal incorrectly. must have been it.

well. any other suggestions? I just lost about 50-60 gigs of hd space soo...

Should i restore my comp from a previous time machine back up?

many thanks

edit: and yes i restarted but it didn't fix it. ill try those applications though. ugh frustrating

 

[tstirling22]

ok so check this out. very strange.

So i recently created a trash folder for my sidebar and put in a custom 16x16 icon on the sidebar shortcut to make it legit.

I randomly go to macintosh hd and i see a folder with a super pixelated trash icon (must be the 16x16 icon right? and i open it and low and behold all my trash contents! so. the computer didn't even think i deleted all my items when i didn't, it just moved the location of the trash because i put the trash in the sidebar which you're not supposed to be able to do anyway and then I **** up a terminal command.

damn, what a relief. there was 60 gigs of **** in my trash.

Anyway, thanks to all for your help