Perplexing storage space problem on a Mac boot drive

[Ellis Vener]

I am working  with a late 2009 27" 2.66Ghz iMac running OS X 10.9.3
It is fitted with 16GB RAM. the boot drive is a  240GB OWC 3G SSD. Out of the 239.2GB available I can account for everything EXCEPT for ~47GB of the ~58GB in my user folder.
 
Issue: When I go to SSD > users > user name and use the 'get info" tool it tells me that there is 58GB in that folder. I go into the user name folder and run a "Get Info" on each folder I see there. Here's where it gets curious: the sum of those folders is only 11GB. What makes up the other  ~47GB I can't see - the contents appear to be hidden.
 
Any ideas as to what might be going on? How I can find what is in those 47TB? I hate the idea that my SSD is filled up with stuff I cannot account for.

[sbay]

Did you check the contents of hidden directories like Library/ ? I have 13 GB in mine. To see this in Finder hold down the option key and you should see "Library" in the Go menu.

Alternatively try running "du -sh *"  in the terminal to see a summary of disk usage by directory (this should show hidden files). Or you can use a  program like GrandPerspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net) which will display file disk usage graphically.

[Ellis Vener]

Thanks Stephen,

I'll give those  a go in the morning.

[howardm]

go w/ GrandPerspective.

du output isn't sorted in numerical/size order so it can be hard to sift through the sea of ASCII output.  You may also ahve a
large amount of stuff in .Trash or ~/Library (like emails, caches, etc)

[Ellis Vener]

Thanks Howard. I have grand perspective but do not use it much. I have already sorted out the .Trash and ~/Library folders.