Macbook Air - Deleting large files but not getting back the space I'm running 10.6.8 on my Macbook Air. I have been archiving lots of large files to an external drive, but after doing so, my computer doesn't recognize that the files/data are gone. Even after a restart.

I've tried to use iBoost-up to clean things up, and restarted again but my computer acts like I haven't cleared up any space when in fact I have removed close to a dozen gigabytes. I never used Time Machine, the files are archived off my drive. I want the space I freed up to display, but it doesn't!

Does anyone know why?
Deleting file from Finder moves them to the Trash for recovery.  They're still on your disks taking up space. So you can either empty the Trash in Finder or use rm from terminal to immediately and permanently delete the files.