On Mon, 21 May 2012, Thomas Lunde wrote: > Most of the answers so far (lsof, sync, etc. ) seem to have missed the > fact that the OP rebooted the box after deletion. Since no process or > file handle will survive that, let me ask: > > Is there any reason that there could be hard links on this volume? > Some backup systems use those for files that don't change between backup > runs. Apple's Time Machine is one example of a system that does such, > but there are many others. > > Using find or ls -l paired with egrep, check for hard links. You won't > get the disk space back until the last link to a file has been rm'd. > > Let us know what the ultimate solution is, please. Mr. B-o-B (the OP) doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would make this mistake, but my first thought was "wastebasket" only because that's what would happen to naive users on Windows. But regarding stupid mistakes -- I can do things that no one would even believe were possible. Mike