How to find hidden space wasting files?

.
Recently, I've noticed my system seems to be generating
some files that are chewing up space, but I can't find
where this is happening. When I reboot, the wasted
space is reclaimed/restored, and then it gradually builds
up again.

I've deleted files in various "tmp" and "temp" directories
and cleared 'cache' but that does not find and reclaim all
the space.

Where can I look to find all the files that the system is
generating? And how can I modify the system so it will
keep from wasting so much space?

After my last previous reboot two days ago, 'df' showed this:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2             9.9G  2.6G  6.8G  28% /
/dev/hda1              76M  5.3M   67M   8% /boot
/dev/hda3             9.9G  7.5G  2.5G  76% /home
/dev/hda7             9.9G  7.3G  2.1G  78% /mnt/hda7

Today, before I rebooted again, it looked like this:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2             9.9G  2.6G  6.8G  28% /
/dev/hda1              76M  5.3M   67M   8% /boot
/dev/hda3             9.9G  8.5G  1.4G  87% /home
/dev/hda7             9.9G  7.3G  2.1G  78% /mnt/hda7

Today, after rebooting again, it looked like this:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2             9.9G  2.6G  6.8G  28% /
/dev/hda1              76M  5.3M   67M   8% /boot
/dev/hda3             9.9G  7.5G  2.5G  76% /home
/dev/hda7             9.9G  7.3G  2.1G  78% /mnt/hda7

Notice the change in my /home directory from available 2.5G
to 1.4G and back to 2.5G after rebooting again.


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