Disk Utility- Restoring space?

a few days ago erasing free space on mac osx 10.5.8 via disk utility. going smoothly until seemed end of operation when disk utility became unresponsive , quit. since then, memory on mac has been 232 gb 0 available apparently 232 gb "used". there way restore memory seemed have lost during erasure of free space? read article mentioned amount of space prior , after free space erase same, i'm confused why memory missing. explanations/remedies appreciated.

side note: browsed forum, came across no threads addressed issue specifically.

 

1) have tried rebooting machine?

2) why didi want erase free space? why via disc utility , not via finder?

 

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