20gb of Disk Space Vanishes? On it's own?

Hi guys, I'm a long time mac user and have never seen anything like this.
I run a 2.53gz MBP 5,1. with 4gb of ram and 320gb HD. I have the drive partitioned with a 60gb NTFS bootcamp partition for WindowsXP that I use with Parallels 4. I use Time Machine to backup to a 2tb WD drive.
So, I've been running the machine all day long with approximately 24.5gb of disk space. I left my desk around 6:00 today and I just came back to find a low disk space error and saw that I only had 1.8gb left, and watched it drip down to 1.5, 1.3 and 1.1gb right in front of my eyes without doing anything at all! I rebooted and now the computer has been sitting steady at 5.7gb. I looked through my timemachine archive to earlier in the day and the last update was right after I left (with 24.5gb of disk space left) the next update is inexplicably at 1.7gb. I did get info on all the main folders in my root directory (Applications, Library, System & Users) and the identical folders now and there is almost no difference whatsoever in folder size! Yet, when you look at the bottom of the window in the time machine reference from a few hours earlier it says 24.5gb available, and then go back to the "now" window it says 5.7gb available...
I'm totally baffled. approximately 19gb of disk space just completely vanished and I can't account for the change or the increase in used disk space anywhere.
The only recent update was the Security Update 2010-001 that was issued on the 19th.
I have tried to restart. Reset the PRAM. Checked the SMART status using Disk Utility. Everything checks out.
The only thing I could possibly point to is an issue with Bootcamp and the NTFS drive. However I was not running bootcamp or parallels when this happened.
Time Machine was stuck at "Calculating Changes... (15%)" when I came back and the Time Machine drive is nearly full...but I don't think this should matter.
Also Time Machine hasn't completed a full backup since the drive was at it's original 24.5gb. I'm wondering if it got stuck when doing a backup and somehow is confused between what is backed up and what isn't and there is disk space being "held" somewhere by time machine somehow.
Any suggestions on what happened to the mystery 19gb?
Message was edited by: gabeotron

The two swap files sound OK, you will always have at least one of approximately 60MBs. The sleepimage is also normal: it will be about the size of the RAM you have, and contains the content of your actual RAM. The point being that if you put your computer into hibernate, or for a laptop the battery runs out of juice, when the machine is again brought back into action it can resume from where it was when things were stopped. So that is normal.
It sounds like perhaps a run-away log file could be responsible. You might take a look in
/private/var/log
Arrange by size and see what you've got. My biggest one is the folder for DiagnosticMessages, at 5MBs. Everything else is in the KB range.
If that doesn't turn up the culprit you can use the Terminal commands.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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This should help:
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Disk space vanishing, other strange behavior

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You may not have gotten all of MacKeeper. From an earlier post of mine:
I'd search for it using EasyFind. Enter "MacKeeper" and "Zeobit." Set EF to scan all files and folders, invisible, case insensitive, package contents. Search using boolean and phrase. It will probably do a more thorough job than Spotlight. If you can't "Destroy" from EF, use Reveal in Finder to trash and authenticate from there.
It is also known to install a Windows emulator called "wine;" search for that.
Also, look in the Keychain for anything MacKeeper or zeobit related, and for its cookies in your browser. When finished, empty the Trash and restart.
http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/index.html
Somehow, as BDAqua suggested, I'm still suspecting it's the logs filling up with a constantly repeating message. Are there any other Users? Can you log in to those and see what's going on with those logs?
Permissons repair has nothing to do with this.
Get OmniDisk Sweeper. Run it logged in to all your users.
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

Weird situation, disappearing disk space while using only few applications

Hello
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Help-Erasing a Boot Camp Partition Caused 32 GB of Disk Space to Vanish

Hi
I'm a new mac user I'd I have been really happy so far, expect for this problem:
-I created a 32 gb partition with boot camp.
-I tried installing windows xp without knowing I had to format the system to NTFS during the install
The installation didnt work, and I erased the bootcamp partition.
-When I tried to create a new boot camp partition, it said my Mac HD size hard drive is 227 gb, ie the *32 gb allocated to the partition had vanished*. In addition, I could not recreate a partition because of an error message.
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Does anyone know how to recover space lost by Boot Camp?
Thanks

qcpharaoh wrote:
-When I tried to create a new boot camp partition, it said my Mac HD size hard drive is 227 gb, ie the *32 gb allocated to the partition had vanished*. In addition, I could not recreate a partition because of an error message.
-I ran the snow leopard CD's disk utility and thought that I had fixed the problem.
-However in boot camp, the mac drive is still only 227 gb (missing 32 gb). I can create partitions now, and deleting these partitions does cause any additional loss of disk space.
Let me ask a simple question. What size HD do you have in your Mac? You say you see 227 GB and that 32GB is "missing". If I add those two numbers up I com up with 259 GB. I suspect that your "missing" space is due to the inconsistencies in which Snow Leopard now reports 1 GB. In some places it reports 1 GB as a hard disk manufacturer (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes). In other places it reports 1 GB as a binary number (1 GB = 2^^30 [IIRC] = 1,073,741,824 Bytes). Since I do not know of any drive manufacturer that sells a 259 GB drive, I suspect that this is just due to the differing definitions of 1 GB.

Vanishing disk space 10.6.3 Server

I have Snow Leopard Server installed on a mac mini (dual hard drives). It is configured with two partitions, one for the Operating System and one for Time Machine backups for the 7 Macs in the office.
I keep losing free space on the OS partition (Time Machine is not backing up to this drive). I know the first culprit is usually a runaway log file. However, I simply cannot find a huge log file.
The math on the drive simply does not add up. I show that I am using less than 20GB on that partition but it is reporting that I am using 50GB! I should have 50GB free!
Now when I restart I reclaim all the space and it is fine. Over the course of a day I can sit there and watch my free space tick away again.
One time it got so bad that I got the dreaded low disk space warning. It got down to zero free, but then bumped back to 900MB free and this repeated.
Here is a picture to hopefully help.
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/7294/screenshot20100528at342.png
Any Ideas?

I tried whatsize, Grandperspective ets. The programs are just not seeing the files.
I even ran Grandperspective through sudo in the terminal and while it showed other users files now, still did not show 45GB of Miscellaneous files."
These misc space is:
*Miscellaneous used space:* All used space that is not accounted for by the size of the scanned files. This includes the following:
Files that were not scanned, either because the scanned folder was not at the root of the volume, or the user did not have permissions to access all subfolders.
Files that are excluded by the filter (if any).
Disk space that is not accounted for because the Logical file size measure is used, which underestimates the space that files actually take up.
Low-level file system data, needed to store amongst others the folder hierarchy.
I am going to try a repair booting from the install disc to see if there is any corruption or something once I can kick the other users off for the day.

Vanishing disk space - right before my eyes!

I've just seen something I've never seen before. I've just been resizing some jpegs, and creating small thumbnails using Adobe Fireworks.
And I just happened to notice that available disk space had gone down from around 90GB to around 40GB. No idea what happened, but alarmingly it was continuing to reduce all by itself right in front of my eyes without me even doing anything.
I've just rebooted the machine and Finder is reporting about 50GB less than I'd expect, but has at least stopped reducing.
Any ideas what caused this (I certainly wasn't creating gigs and gigs of images)?
And how can I figure out what's taking up that 50GB or so and get rid of it?
Update - I've run OmniDiskSweeper, and found the following suspicious looking log files :
26.7GB - kernel.log.0
8.3GB - asl
6.7GB - kernel.log
And a few smaller kernel files -
11.7MB - kernel.log.1.bz2
6.9MB - kernel.log.2.bz2
3.5MB - kernel.log.0.bz2
Does that lot sound the guilty party?
If so, how do I delete it?
I can't see the Private folder in the Finder...
Strangely, having left the machine asleep overnight, the Finder is now reporting 51GB free when it was only reporting 42GB free when I left it asleep last night....
I've just swept again, and the above logs have now changed to :
26.7GB - kernel.log.0
6.7GB - kernel.log.0
140.4MB - asl
And a few smaller kernel files -
17.9MB - kernel.log.bz2
11.7MB - kernel.log.2.bz2
6.9MB - kernel.log.3.bz2
Any advice on what's safe to delete (presumably directly in OmniDiskSweeper, as I can't see that Private folder in the Finder) would be much appreciated.
Message was edited by: Iain MacDonald1

HI,
That doesn't sound good.
*"26.7GB - kernel.log.0"*
Not sure... try some maintenance.
Boot from your install disk and run Disk Utility to check for errors.
Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger and later) and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
*(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel. It should say: Verified)*
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
When you are finished with DU, from the Menu Bar, select Utilities/Startup Manager.
Select your start up disk and click Restart
Check available disk space.
Control or right click the MacintoshHD icon on your Desktop. Click "Get Info". Under the General tab you will see Capacity and Available. *Make sure there is at least 10% available disk space, 15% is better.*
If you cannot boot from your install disk, try booting in Safe Mode
What is Safe Mode
Carolyn

Free Disk space loss for no reason

I have several G4's running 10.3.9 that are losing disk space to the point of getting system volume errors I can not find where the lose is coming from no new installs except updates I have one now that loses 100MB a day for now reason delete unneccesary files looked at all new modify and still can't find what is using this disk space that wasn't there before are there hidden files that are being created or is there a system problem creating this.

your computer does write certain files such as logs. These are normally kept clean by maintenance scripts that run in the early hours of the morning, but if you turn off your computer or put it to sleep overnight they will not run.
I'd suggest checking out [Applejack for Panther|http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596&vid=158470]
Here's a list of reading with some specifally mentioning vanishing space:
Where did my disk space go?
[http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243]
Disk Inventory (free) [http://www.derlien.com>
WhatSize (now shareware and only useful on <20GB drives until you buy it) [http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize>
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
[http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html]
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
[http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html]
Increase HD Free Space
[http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd free-space-laptop.html]
How to free up my disk space
[http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html]

There is no more space for virtual disk ServerName_2.vmdk. You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking Retry. Click Cancel to terminate this session.   Time: 30/05/2014 1:16:20 AM

Recently, our mail server crashed at about 7pm one night, with the error 'There is no more space for virtual disk ServerName_2.vmdk. You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking Retry. Click Cancel to terminate this session.'
When we click Retry, the server starts up OK.
There are no snapshots listed in Snapshot manager for any of the virtual machines on the host.
There is also free disk space available on the host and for the VM with the disk errors.
This happened at least three more times, often at bad times. Each time, we were able to click 'Retry' and the disk/system would allow the VM to start-up successfully.
I checked the Forums, the VMware support articles and the internet as I had not seen this problem before. I have completed the VSphere 5.1 - Fast Track course and this issue was NOT covered in the training.
Most of the advice on-line and even that on the VMware web-site was pointing to snapshots being the cause of this issue. There are no snapshots enabled and I cannot see evidence of snapshots ever being used.
- We are running VMware vsphere (5.1.0) and there are (were) 4 virtual machines running on the ESX host. We are using the free version of VMware/ESXi.
- The Hard disk types we are using for this Virtual Machine are 'Thin Provisioned'.
- There are 4 [Thin Provisioned] Hard Disks for this virtual machine.
- There are 6 CPUs
- There is 20GB of RAM (memory)
- The VM is running Windows Server 2008 R2 as the guest/VM operating system. It is an Exchange 2010 SP1 mail server. There is plenty of available disk space on all the drives. The [Exchange] log files are cleaned out regularly (automated).
I decided to move one of our non-critical servers off this host and on to another host to see if this helped the problem. This took quite some time, as we are not using HA or vmotion, nor do we have VCenter Server...nonetheless, I finally managed to get the non-critical server on to another host (n.b. This was a much smaller machine with less virtual resources assigned to it).
After moving the non-critical server off this host, we decided to monitor the Host and see if the issue resolved itself.
I checked the host about 6-10 times a day, from first thing in the morning till last thing at night - monitoring the performance of not only the Virtual Machine, but the ESXi host also.
There were no adverse performance issues. The only thing I did note, was in the Summary page on the ESX Host, under Storage, was If I right-clicked on the datastore and clicked refresh, then the free disk space would drop (ie from 140GB to 125GB).
After monitoring the host and VM for about 2 weeks, we did NOT have another instance of the above error.
Sorry for the long winded post, but I wanted to give as much detail given this error has been raised before and snapshots are usually blamed as the cause.
My question is this:
If the ESX host had plenty of available disk capacity and there were no snapshots enabled on the VM (or any other VM's on the same host), then why did our Virtual machine crash with the error that 'there is not more space for virtual disk Servername_2.vmdk'?
How do we prevent this issue from happening if we don't know the underlying cause?
I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions.
If I have not provided enough info on the specs or environment, please let me know and I will provide more information.
Thanks all,
Kurt

The type of storage is really based on your requirements, and your ability to withstand downtime.
iSCSI as you are using with a NAS such as Synology or QNAP. NAS Selector - Support - Synology - Network Attached Storage (NAS)
I wouldn't use iSCSI for Exchange or any database. It's a bit slow.
Do you have a single physical host? Then I'd probably to an external direct attached storage. This would be a card inserted in your host server that gives you multilane SAS/SATA connectivity (www.techcable.com/SAS-SATA/SAS-SATA.pps) and an external disk enclosure/array.
For multiple hosts to a single array, I recommend a fibre channel connection to a FC capable switch, and on to a FC connected array.
We used to use a HP P2000 (on old G1), but it's since been retired. Worked pretty well once firmware was upgraded. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/disk-storage/product-detail.html?oid=4118559#!tab=features. They can be connected via iSCSI, Fibre Channel or 6GB SAS so they are flexible and reasonably priced.
Recommendations:
     Use RAID 6 with your large disk arrays. With large disks there is a measurable failure rate when rebuilding a failed RAID5 array based on MTBF.
     Use smaller 15K disks in RAID 0+1 for speed on databases/Exchange.
     Use slower 7.2K disks in RAID6 for file storage.
We are a small hospital and we have 3 VMware servers with dual CNA (FC and Ethernet in a single twinax cable) connections to 2 redundant Cisco Nexus 5K switches and then 4 Fibre Channel connections to an EMC VNX 5300. It's extremely fast with about 50 virtual servers, but was quite an investment. One thing we don't have to worry about is down time. If there ever is an equipment failure, we have redundant everything, including power split between two UPSs.
Our VNX has 3 tiers of performance. 3 100GB SSD "Fast Cache" in RAID 1 with hot spare, to keep the most used data ready, but it's not really a tier, however one could be built utilizing the same disks. A second tier is performance tier with a 8 600GB RAID 0+1 and hot spare. The third is a bunch of 7.2K 3TB disks in RAID6. The VNX autotiers, placing data on disks depending on where it's needed. The volumes are sliced and diced automatically in the background to make this happen and we never have to touch it. I used a demo of Solarwinds Storage Manager to monitor performance for a while and the utilization was always low, meaning all data access was fast, througout the day.
D

How to free up disk space on drive C

We have been running Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials Sp1 for a number of years now without any apparent problems. We have noticed over this period, the free space on the 'C' drive diminishing over time. We are now at a point where housekeeping
needs to be undertaken to prevent disk space issues occurring in the future.
1) Is there an in-built utility that would identify what applications or directories are using the most space? If not, are you aware of a utility that could offer this functionality i.e. Treesize. Does Microsoft offer a utility?, maybe as part of Systernals?
2) The 'C' drive is 60Gb in size (I believe this was the default size during the install). When the server was initially installed, it had 20Gb free space on drive 'C'. At the point of writing, free space is now 7Gb. All installed applications and user shares
are pointing to a second drive (D). I'm assuming that the increase in used space is caused by log files or windows updates.
2) I've manually scoured the 'C' drive and noticed that folder 'C:\Windows\winsxs' is 10.6Gb in size. I believe this folder relates to Windows Updates. Are we able to carry out housekeeping on this folder? If so, please could you advise the correct way of achieving
this. The 'Disk Cleanup' utility only offers to clean up 1.2Gb which is not enough.
I hope someone can offer some assistance.
Regards

Hi LMG09,
Currently, please refer to following article and check if help us to recover Disk Space on C drive on the SBS
2011.
Recovering
Disk Space on the C: Drive in Small Business Server 2008
à
I've manually scoured the 'C' drive and noticed that folder 'C:\Windows\winsxs' is 10.6Gb in size
The Windows component store (C:\Windows\winsxs) directory is used during servicing operations within Windows
installations. Servicing operations include, but are not limited to, Windows Update, service pack, and hotfix installations. The component store contains all the files that are required for a Windows installation. And, any updates to those files are also held
within the component store as the updates are installed. Please also refer to following article and check if can help you.
How
to Clean up the WinSxS Directory and Free Up Disk Space on Windows Server 2008 R2 with New Update
If any update, please feel free to let us know.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Justin Gu
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

I deleted unwanted photos from my iPhoto library, emptied iPhoto trash & Finder trash... this did not free up disk space. please help!

I deleted unwanted photos from my iPhoto library, emptied iPhoto trash & Finder trash... this did not free up disk space. please help!
I have a 15-inch MacBook Pro (Late 2011) with OS X Mavericks 10.9.5
Last week, my 500 GB Harddrive had 120 GB free space. I was feeling crumby and decided to make productive use of taking a day off to lounge around. I snuggled up with my laptop and dedicated hours to meticulously combing through my iPhoto Library. I had 13,000 pictures, and I got rid of those I didn't want. Having said "sayōnara" to about 6,500 pictures, I then emptied the iPhoto trash and the Finder trash. I took delight in the iconic paper crumpling sound of them vanishing into the digital void.
Everything seemed perfect: the photos I loved were still there, the photos I loathed were gone, both trashes were beautifully empty. Having thrown away all of those awful, boring, and unflattering images of poorly light lunches and selfies gone wrong, my iPhoto library was half the size as before! I felt renewed, a little lighter, somehow more free, and I expected my hard drive to be a bit different to.
I eagerly checked my storage stats. My heart sank to see that my 120 GB of free space, was still only 120 GB of free space. I restarted my MacBook; this did not help. I restarted it the next day; this also did not help. It's been 5 days and the hard drive still has 120 GB free space. This is not an emergency and it will probably be a good while before I clutter my laptop to the brim. Yet while I am glad I don't have to see cringeworthy pictures of my ex's unmentionables every time I'm showing off things I do want to remember, I'm still disappointed and now obsessed with solving this mystery.
What is going on? I don't see them, so where are they hiding? How do I get the free space I should have earned from throwing away 1,000's of photos?!

Thank you, Terence!
Yes, I only emptied the trash when it was really full, once I waited until the trash cans contained 2,600 photos and then I emptied them - Oooops! In the future, I'll keep in mind your suggestion of deleting less than 100 photos at a time.
I downloaded the iPhoto Library Manager and used it to rebuild my iPhoto. After a few hours of rebuilding, it generated a new copy of my iPhoto Library. This versions was nearly identical to the original (it was missing 5 photos and was therefore only 5 mb smaller). I guess my Library wasn't defective.
I checked my storage stats, and interestingly, using iPhoto Library Manager did help with the problem that developed after I re-indexed my hard drive. My hard drive is able to properly recognize data categories again, instead of listing almost everything as "Other". Understandably, my free disk space changed from 120 GB to about 60 GB, because my hard drive now contained a second copy of my iPhoto Library as well as iPhoto Library Manager. It seemed like all I needed to do was throw these away, but when I emptied the trash, my problem was not solved. My Hard drive now looked like this:
It appears to me that when I empty the trash, the things I throw away are just hanging around as backups instead of leaving! I went into System Preferences and turned of my time machine OFF. Now my hard drive looks likes this:
The back ups of the iPhoto files, and the program which I deleted, are still on my hard drive some where but now they are listed as "Other" instead of "Backups". Do you know where they might be and how I can delete them for good?

Help needed: Disk space does not free up even after deleting files.

Background information for this problem: I have my iPhoto library on an external HD, and was importing files from that same drive into iPhoto, and began receiving messages that I was very low on disk space on my internal HD. From here, it seemed like iPhoto was using my boot drive for some kind of cache. Regardless of the actual reason, I began moving files from my internal HD to fix this problem temporarily (while I was importing).
At this point, I started fiddling with my files and found that no matter how many files I would delete from my HD, the available space in the finder would not free up. *At this point, I have less than 20GB on my HD, yet it says I have 1.23 GB available out of 108 GB.*
Here is what I have already tried to fix the problem, to no avail:
a) Original user was using Filevault. I backed up all the files, created a new user without Filevault, and restored the files.
b) Booted from CD and used Disk Utility to erase free space.
c) Verified and fixed permissions
d) Deleted all app and system caches (via CacheOut X)
e) Fixed/Repaired all user/system preferences (via Preferential Treatment)
*Does anyone have any idea what's going on?*
-

Thanks for the suggestion.
I ran WhatSize and here is the result. Oddly, it says there is 40.2 GB used (in the top-left) which conflicts with the information directly below it: "Capacity 108 GB, Used 103GB, Available 4.27 GB". Not so helpful.
Disk Inventory X solved the problem, however. Much thanks! I wasted most of my weekend troubleshooting this sad issue. Anyway, Disk Inventory X revealed a bug where my external hard drive for photos was still appearing as a mounted volume, even though the HD was no longer connected. Freaky.
After moving it to the trash and deleting it, I've recovered the space.
Again, thanks! Contact me if you're curious about the details, as this might help you diagnose similar problems in the future.
- Mike

Losing Hard Disk Space

Hi All. I'm seriously losing hard disk space on my Macbook Pro 17 and it's been doing this heavily since I installed Lion.
My laptop has a 160GB hard drive. Out of this, I can add up only 70GB of files. Add another 20GB of free disk space so that totals 90GB. What's happened to the remaining 50GB hard disk space? Are there invisible files being written that I need to look for? Please help as this is really frustrating. Even using WhatSize doesn't add up to all the hard drive space I should have.

Naz Hussain wrote:
On mobile backups I only have 1.3MB. I use Time Machine but that goes to an external hard drive.
By default, Lion on notebook computers will also save backups to your local disk. If you have many large files that are changing, that could account for your space.
If any software is creating directories then I can't see it.
The curl and ffmpeg make me suspect that you have some torrent or peer-to-peer software. Such software would generate many large files that Time Machine's local snapshots would backup. It would also be likely to save such files in temporary directories that are hidden.

20gb of Disk Space Vanishes? On it's own?

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