unexplained used hard drive space? please help

[busterbluth]

I have a 2008 MBP, and my hard drive space has been steadily declining without explanation. I tallied all the folders I could find and it still left 80 gigabytes of unexplained hard drive usage.
What could be explaining all this storage space? How do I clean it up? Thanks for any help.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Take a look at DiskInventory X (will not work in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.

 

[busterbluth]

Thanks so much!. I used two of the programs and basically is found 180-200 gb. this still leaves 50gb that I can't account for thats not located in my user folder. Any idea where that could be coming from? Thanks again!

 

[andalusia]

Could you post a screenshot at all?

 

[busterbluth]

here it is. the bottom left corner says 173 gb but it is a 250gb hard drive

 

[simsaladimbamba]

here it is. the bottom left corner says 173 gb but it is a 250gb hard drive

Okay, that is not a really helpful screenshot.

Better use OmniDiskSweeper, as it sorts by biggest folders.