Help -- need help

[EdE]

I started doing a backup from my MacBook Pro (OS 10.5.8) to a new external drive, which apparently went haywire and stopped without completing. I tried it again and it stopped again, this time saying I had run out of disk space on my parent drive (on the MacBook Pro). I'm not particularly concerned about what happened wrong on the backup, but somehow during the two failed backup attempts the process filled up my MacBook Pro hard drive with approx. 50 gigs of extra data, about the same amount I was trying to back up. Now it barely has enough space to function - veerrrryy sloowwly.

I've looked for a large cache that might have been created by the screwed up backup attempts, but no luck so far.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[dnanian]

Use Finder's "Go To Folder" command to open

/Volumes

Delete any folders (not links/aliases) that you find there and empty your trash...

[EdE]

no /volumes to be found. Any other thoughts? I checked the size of each folder (users, library, etc.) and they are the expected size. They add up to 65 gigs, which is what they should and the trash has been emptied. But DIsk Utility shows the entire 12- gig drive is chock full.

[dnanian]

/Volumes is definitely there. Don't use spotlight: use "Go To Folder".