Following your lead...

Code:
Artie-s-Computer-4:~ artie$ df -h /Volumes/Sword\ Of\ 1,000\ Truths
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s2  7.1Gi  3.4Gi  3.7Gi    48%    /Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths

Artie-s-Computer-4:~ artie$ vsdbutil -c /Volumes/Sword\ Of\ 1,000\ Truths
No entry found for '/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths'.

Artie-s-Computer-4:~ artie$ sudo du -hxd1 /Volumes/Sword\ Of\ 1,000\ Truths
324K	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/.fseventsd
 15M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/.Spotlight-V100
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/.TemporaryItems
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/.Trashes
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/.vol
 63M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Applications
3.9M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/bin
 72M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Clutter
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/cores
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/dev
545M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Downloads
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/home
8.2M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/kBase
423M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Library
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/net
  0B	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Network
164M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/private
2.6M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/sbin
1.6G	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/System
 31M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Users
359M	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/usr
 12K	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths/Volumes
3.3G	/Volumes/Sword Of 1,000 Truths

Artie-s-Computer-4:~ artie$ time diskutil verifyVolume /Volumes/Sword\ Of\ 1,000\ Truths
Started verify/repair volume (filesystem) on disk disk1s2 Sword Of 1,000 Truths
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking Extents Overflow file
Checking Catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking Catalog hierarchy
Checking Extended Attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume Sword Of 1,000 Truths appears to be OK
[ + 0%..10%..20%..30%..40%..50%..60%..70%..80%..90%..100% ] 
Finished verify/repair volume (filesystem) on disk disk1s2 Sword Of 1,000 Truths

real	0m18.063s
user	0m0.121s
sys	0m0.032s

du -hxd1 took 65 seconds to run.

I looked at vsdbutil -c in Bwana, but didn't really follow what I read; can you explain why my answer differs from yours?

> Anyway, once we measure all the hidden stuff too (seems i have a fat 4 gig /var/vm/sleepimage file to accommodate), i think trying this on a 8 gig disk would be way too tight.

In an extraneous e-mail from Ted Landau he mentioned running Snow Leopard on either an 8Gb or 16Gb flash drive, so I knew it could be done on an 8, but I was close to tearing my hair out, what with not being able to get the installation small enough, until I remembered to disable safe sleep and trash /var/vm/sleepimage.

My installation is (quite obviously) totally stripped down, but I can carry my deuced Mac(hina) in my shirt pocket, with everything I really need, if I choose to do so.

(Your response to dk about partitioning is appreciated; I didn't care to get into that issue yet again.)

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire