Gigantic temporary file from free space erase.

Try rerunning the Erase Free Space from your Snow Leopard install DVD. Boot while pressing "C", choose your language, and run Disk Utility from the "Utilities" menu.

It is probably in /private/tmp/

From the desktop menu: Go > Go to Folder
Type in /private/tmp
Erase everything in there
Empty Trash
Reboot

I have the same problem. I was using the disc erase, I had a crash and now I am 'missing' over 200 Gigs of space. I can't find the file anywhere and erasing everything in that folder did not work. Should I erase the whole folder in order to catch the hidden file?

Anyone have any other suggestions?

I found this in another thread- but I am not sure I understand it.

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Recovering From a Failed Secure Erase Free Space
January 14, 2007 - 4:20pm

Sometimes, when using the erase free space function of Disk Utility, the process will be interrupted by a crash, hang, power outage, or small mammal urinating on the power supply. Should this happen, you’ll find that your disk has suddenly lost the majority of its free space and nothing you do in the GUI will show you where it is. No amount of checking the disk will bring it back, because it’s not a catalog problem.

Disk Utility accomplishes the erase feature by creating large sparse image files in a preset directory. It then deletes them with the srm tool (secure remove) and an overwrite pattern of your choice. If Disk Utility is interrupted, this sparse image is left on the disk just taking up space. Starting another free space erase session makes another file, instead of cleaning up the previous one. So, as there are no checks in Disk Utility for cleaning up this failed process, so you have to hunt it down manually.

There are a variety of ways of doing this, but I’ll cut to the chase and give you the answer. The files are created in /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems and are sequential variations of the name EFTFile1.sparseimage. Simply remove these files (as root) to reclaim your free space and then start the process again to finish the task.

sudo rm -f /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/*

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Can someone give us a step by step on how this works?

-Open terminal

-type in "sudo rm -f /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/*" ?

Is that all there is to it?

Well no help here.

I just wiped the HD and used my TimeMachine to reinstall everything. My 300 Gigs are back. I pity those without a time machine however.

/Library/Caches being the pre-10.5 location for temporary stuff. It was in a fixed location and world-writable, so Apple decided to move things to a less predictable location and owned by each user for better security.
Now /var/folders/* is used in 10.5 and later. For example, I am running `diskutil secureErase freespace 1 /` right now. And it is creating a file /var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee +++++++++/TemporaryItems/EFTFile1.sparseimage

If you need to find this in the future, running the command `find /var/folders -size +5G` as root is probably a good way to track it down.

What I would hope would have also worked would be to try an app like [WhatSize|http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/13006/whatsize] to identify the files and location. WhatSize costs money but there are alternatives which are free too. I got WhatSize as part of a bundle and it's one of those utilities that turned out to be an unexpected bonus to whatever I was really purchasing the bundle for.

If the previous locations people have suggested don't work for you, try "/private/var/root/.Trash/Recovered files" that's where mine were hiding at least. Hope it helps someone! =3

purpleLynx

Oh My Gosh!!!! Thank you for your advice Thought my parents computer with all UNBACKED-UP FILES were done for. Your a life saver!!