Disk Utility - Erase Free Space; 7.4GB of free space vanished

[supernova_]

OS 10.4.3
Powerbook 12" 1.5Ghz

My hard drive was getting pretty full, so I freed up a whole load of space by deleting old mp3s and things that I no longer needed. I didn't delete anything else. I cleared about 7 gigs.

I then used disk utility's 'erase free space' function to see if that would increase the amount of space available.

It started, went through the temp file creation, went through the erase, and then when it got to (I can't recall exactly, but I *think* it was) the temp file deletion it just froze. I left it for nearly an hour to see if it would shift, but absolutely nothing happened. I quit disk utility - despite the warning advising me that it may make the machine unbootable.

Finder was then showing 0kb of free space - nothing at all.

I tried restarting disk utility and running the function again, but it would not run. Unfortunately I did not note the error message.

I deleted some more old files, and tried again - still nothing.

I did an archive and install from my system disks, but the missing space still did not reappear.

Any suggestions?

 

[Satcomer]

If you just reboot it will clear your Swap filter. Also if you boot into Safe Mode your Font Cache will be put in the trash can. Once that happens you can empty the trash. Then reboot back into normal mode. Also clear some of the programs you no longer use. Games usually take up a lot of space.

Remember you OS X needs some room for it's Swap files. If you are saving a lot of music or videos you may want to look at a FireWire disk to store those files on them.