After Archive and Install 10Gb of disk space has disappeared!

I was having various minor problems which I have mentioned elsewhere and out of shear frustration I decided to stop wasting any more time and do an Archive and Install - preserving accounts etc.
After the subsequent Software Updates I was horrified to see that my main disk was 10Gb down on what it had been just prior to doing the installation. It was moreso because unlike the original installation I had not installed all the Languages, Fonts and Printers which I would not be using, so I hoped to gain some space - not lose it.
Anybody any ideas where this drive space has gone?
And please nobody suggest the Previous Systems folder - I dealt with that.

Alf Megson wrote:
Do you really want me to answer that question?
yes. I had to ask. I don't know you and I've seen way too many posts by people with similar problems who don't know that one has to empty trash to actually reclaim the missing space.
Boot from the leopard install DVd and repair the startup drive (not permissions). reboot and see if that makes a differences. if not try to find out what's taking all the space. see this post for tools for that.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8188595&#8188595
10GB should not be hard to find.

Similar Messages

Finder not responding after Archive and install

I recently encountered my first problem ever with my mac(new in '05) This is the first mac I have owned; I have worked on G3's and G4's in the past. After reading through many message boards and support pages I don't believe my problem to be similar but different to previous posts.
My problem started off with an OS problem that I was able to diagnose in the "help" book I purchased when Leopard came out. It said I should Archive and Install to remedy the problem and keep my files. I ran the archive the install (it gave me no options to preserve user or network settings). After Archive and install my computer started up alright, but I got the permanent beachball and the finder does not work. it is constantly non responsive. I can relaunch finder, but after it restarts it goes non responsive immediately once again. So I can't actually access my "previous system" folder to move anything over. I checked my dock items and finder, they opened, but my itunes asked for an update. I list of update items came up; I did the non-restart items first. they updated fine, (my itunes old itunes playlists are viewable but not playable now) then I did the items that required a restart. That is when I found out that I could not shut down or restart my computer with std. procedures.
Currently I can only access my spotlight or apple pull down menu if I am in a functioning dock program (safari or itunes, quicktime. etc.) after reading some more support pages it looked like the common thing to do was check permissions and verify disk. I did, I repaired two permissions and the disk was OK. I did look at the HD files, they were as I remembered, but unaccessible (greyed out) and the "previous system" folder was present. +It didn't look like I would expect. The HD looked same as it used to just with a previous system folder.+ After checking the permissions and verified the disk I tried a hard restart. It came back the same as before, unresponsive finder and only the few dock items worked along with spotlight. I checked permissions and disk verify again and everything was OK.
Sorry to be long winded I am trying to be thorough...In short, My finder does not work after doing an Archive and Install to fix my original problem (which has been fixed)...the remedy for an unresponsive finder is to do an archive and install. Is another archive and install really going to fix my problem? Can I archive and install OSX 10.4 and work my way back up to 10.5.6?
Secondly is there a way to restart my computer without doing another hard restart?

It won't let me add a new account. I am locked out and when I try to unlock it gives me the beachball and becomes non responsive after it tries to authenticate.
I looked at the log file, I am not sure what exactly to look for. I am no programer. I see an awful lot of negative wording. I see some errors like "error (-4956) locating menu extra but they are mostly under system preferences...I see some stuff in the loginwindow that says is not a full path... Otherwise, the only reference I see to the finder is when I have force quit the finder.
2/8/09 8:59:55 PM com.apple.launchd[114] ([0x0-0x4d04d].com.apple.finder[304]) Exited: Terminated
2/8/09 11:10:17 PM com.apple.launchd[114] ([0x0-0x57057].com.apple.finder[321]) Exited: Terminated

Cd inserted but unrecognized after "archive and install"

After "archive and install" OS X.2 and clicking on "save settings", everything works fine, except sound cds are not recognized when inserted. iTunes works fine with the original files on hard disk, but doesnt see the cd (it did before).
I repaired permissions. I deleted the "previous systems" folder. still nothing.
I did notice that the "previous systems" folder has an "audio" file in it but the current "system" folder doesnt. I tried copying this audio file into the current "system" folder but I get the notice that it cant be changed.
I need to hear cds on this computer. Any ideas?
(It isnt a speaker problem as the itunes files play fine).
John in Vancouver

Hi John in Vancouver! And Welcome To
Discussions!
Open System Preferences > CDs & DVDs.
Adjust the appropriate setting there, and see if it
helps.
Good Luck!
ali b
Thanks, ali, but I did that early on. Didnt put it in the post. On insertion of a CD I have it set to open iTUnes.
I found a further problem which is that the midi set-up no longer locates my external keyboard. I will check the discussions under audio for this one, however. (I did check about the CD problem in the audio discussion but nothing there.)
John

Third party AU audio units disappear after archive and install

hey everybody.
so after an forced unfortunate archive and install, my third party AU have disappeared from DP and Logic. they run fine in standalone. how can i get them back into logic?

Move them back from your old archive, or reinstall.
When you do an archive and install, your old system gets removed and a new fresh system put in place. If you had plugins in the system components directories, obviously they aren't gonna be there on a new fresh system.

Where is mail stored after archive and install?

Hello All,
I need to know where my old mails are stored after archive and install. To give a bit of background... This is a work computer. Its a MacMini which came with 10.4 installed. Before I joined the company boss upgraded to Leopard and thats what I have been using all this time. Recently it blue screened and I had to do an archive and install after trying various other options.
I only had the original install discs with 10.4 in them and not the Leopard discs. Since I needed to my computer up and running, I used those discs and did an archive and install.
I have all my old documents, etc but I couldn't open mail from the previous systems folder because its a different OS.
Is it possible to retrieve my old emails without having to install Leopard again?
Any help is appreciated.

When I started the computer up, instead of the login page with the account names coming up, there was just a blue screen. There are lots of articles that gave suggestions to try but nothing worked so I had to archive and install.

Recover mail after archive and install

Hey there good mac people,
I recently archived and installed on my ibook g4. It was successful, my problem is that I forgot to backup all the mail I had in my osx mail app.
The previous system folder (library<mail<mail accounts<com.mac.mailaccounts<English.lproj< file, but I don't know if this will help restore or not?
Some of the mail is still on the server, but it is set to delete from the server once a week, and thus only a weeks worth at best is still on the server.
Does anybody have any suggestions?
In the future, what's the best way to back up mail?

Hello art-is-work.
I don't understand your problem. Archive and Install should have preserved all your data, unless you told it to do otherwise. Did you?
Mail stores most preferences and all account settings in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. Everything else, including all your messages and mailboxes, is stored within the ~/Library/Mail/ folder.
If the problem is that you told the installer to not Preserve Users and Network Settings, then Archive and Install should still have saved a copy of your entire home folder in /Previous Systems/Previous System N/Users/, where N is a number. The old Mail folder and preferences file should be there. You can just copy them to the appropriate location of your current home folder, or follow the somewhat convoluted procedure described in the following article to safely restore them:
How to get files from a previous home directory after Archive and Install (Mac OS X)
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder.

After Archive and Install, there is less room on disk

I recently had to do an archive and install from my Mac OS X Disc 1 & 2, and I new it would take up between 10 and 15GB of Disk space, but I can't figure out how to clean up the disk so I have the amount of space I had before the archive and install. I recently had 59.8 GB, after the archive and install I have 50.08. Any suggestions?

Hi Tha Shiz, Welcome to Apple's Users Help Users Forums.
When you do an A & I you create a 'Previous System Folder.' I suspect that's the difference.
You can keep that for a while till you are sure that everything is OK.
Joyous Computing, JP
Message was edited by: Jpfresno "You can ..."

After Archive and Install, music and photos lost

Hello, I installed Leopard yesterday on my Imac desktop and it went fine, but then somehow it locked me out of the hard drive, and then...the blue screen. I put the orginal Tiger disk back in and re-installed the previous software, opting for 'archive and install'. It worked but my question is this;
Within the previous system folder, my music and photos are still missing. All I see is the iphoto icon which opens to a completely empty program. (Yet the info on this Icon says it is a 1 gb in there). Are my photos lost, really? And if not, how may I retrieve them? Thanks in advance.

You may find it in the Previous System Folder created during an Archive and Install that contains your old system. Assuming you have no need for its contents you can delete the PSF and recover the disk space.
Of course if the hard drive is corrupted then you may have performed an Archive and Install on a corrupted drive which will result in a corrupted installation. Consider doing the following:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.5.2 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

After Archive and Install = computer running slowly

I just ran Archive and Install, repaired my Hard Drive with disk utility and ran software update, everything should be gangbusters.
But now, it takes much longer than usual for my computer to boot and when I do basic things like run a web browser, the finder and itunes at the same time, I get a 'pinwheel of doom' consistenly as if the computer needs to stop and process what's going on.
Why is my computer running so slowly? I have enough ram, processing to run very smoothly and my hard drive now has 15% free space.

After I started a new user and used some of my old programs in that user, they loaded faster on the admin user I've been having problems with, and it seemed like my computer was starting to go back to normal.
New problems... I ran software update and there were a bunch of security updates, quicktime and other stuff I hadn't updated. It took a while to download and install so I left my house for a few hours. I came back and my computer showed the "restart to take effect" prompt. But then it wouldn't boot to OSX and I'm back to square one. Why would this keep happening? Why would my OS stop functioning after leaving it idle for several hours?
So now I'm re-installing the OS again and we'll see what happens.
Could it be that the climate is too hot? I have a thermometer program that says the inside of my computer is 135 degrees F. Is it too hot? Maybe a fan is broken?
In the past my OS has only stopped working due to lack of HD space but now I have about 15% free space. I'm really out of ideas here.

Files missing from library after archive and install

Hi forum folk
any help you could give would be much appreciated.
I can't seem to verify my permissions on HD. I have run disk utility both from finder and from my OSX startup disk and consistently get the error message "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue." I then reinstalled the operating system all together making sure to archive and install as well as archive previous network and preference settings. This means I am running 10.3.4 at the moment (and I can't verify any of the software updates at the moment). After reinstalling I still cannot verify my permissions, so now I am trying to back up all my files so that I can reinstall the OSX again, erase everything, and start from scratch. But I'm running into some very strange problems while doing this. select files are missing from ~/library. there is no Safari file, for example. I tried looking in HD/previous systems/library where my library files were saved before I reinstalled the operating system but there is no such folder in there either. this means all of my bookmarks are gone. additionally, under library/preferences (in both the old and new library folders) there is no file named com.apple.itunes.plst. so all of my itunes playlists are gone as well. these are the only missing files I have found thus far and i can't explain why they selectively would not have been saved after the archive and install. Everything else seems to be intact. Any ideas?
thanks
jb
powerbookG4 Mac OS X (10.3.9) running 10.3.4 at the moment - can't verify permissions on 10.3.9

jbeep:
my HD has a capacity of 8.85 GB available. When I reinstalled panther I had little more than 3 GB available (I deleted a bunch of unneeded things since then)
Thanks for this update. What is the total formatted capacity of your HDD? I ask because I suspected that you might be cutting it pretty close. The rule of thumb is that you should have 10-15% of your total capacity available as free space. My personal rule is 15%-20%. This allows for more efficient perfomrance of OS X.
I am in the process of backing up everything on my seagate combo USB 2.0/firewire 200 GB external (I am using the firewire cord)
Having an up-to-date backup is one of the primary rules, often observed more in the breach than not. Since you have an HDD that supports Firewire, I suggest that you make a bootable clone of your entire HDD using SuperDuper. You can then use this backup as an emergency boot drive. However, it must be Firewire, as PPC Macs don't boot from USB devices.
I also have heard that it is advisable to reinstall the OS "every now and again" and I hadn't done this for at least two years. was I ill-advised?
Most experienced Mac users never re-install, except under dire circumstances. Since installing my new HDD in this computer I have never re-installed. Re-installation is the utlimate intrusive measure, and it exposes one to all kinds of issues, from lost data, to flawed installaton, to installations that fail midstream. Re-installation is not an effective maintenace procedure. Here are some helpful links in terms of maintenance:
Mac OS X 10.3/10.4: System maintenance
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
Maintaining OS X.
I'm going to restart now and try and verify my permissions again using the procedure on the above link. I'll let you know what happens.
Instead of verifying permissions, just go ahead and Repair Disk Permissions. Verifying permissions does nothing, and wastes your time, as it is difficult to tell whether you need to repair, and you have to repair anyway.
Do post back with an update of your progress and any further questions or comments.
Good luck.
cornelius
Message was edited by: cornelius

I need help to recover/relink mail after archive and install

I am helping my friend fix her 15" G4 PowerBook after memory failures caused many crashes. There was no recovering short of a reinstall via "archive and install". All that worked great, but now Mail doesn't recognize the accounts, mailboxes, signatures, etc. that are still located in the user/library/mail folder.
What's up with that? I can't figure out how to relink Mail to this stuff.
Here's more detail:
1) After lots of prior debugging (Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, Apple Hardware Test, single-user commands per Apple tech notes), I did the A&I to 10.3.4 from the original disks.
2) Per Dr. Smoke and The X Lab, I ran the 10.3.9 combo installer right away so that the "older" system would not get confused by the "newer" stuff in the Previous Systems folder.
3) I Launched Mail and it started anew, i.e. didn't recognize accounts and wanted to start over.
Thanks for any help.

The account settings are stored in HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. It looks like that file became corrupt -- maybe its permissions went awry (Disk Utility cannot fix that) and Mail just deleted the file to create a new one.
If your friend doesn't have a backup copy of that file, just set up the accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don't. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in HOME/Library/Mail/ when done.
You'll also have to re-configure most settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it's enabled.

Restoring after archive and install

after using 'archive and install', what is the proper procedure for restoring applications, plugins, etc?
1. manually copy?
2. migration assistant?
3. reinstall using disks/installers?

If they are only in the former system you forgot to to preserve your user settings.
How to Archive & Install:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

Triples of applications after Archive and Install

Hi
I just tried to install Leopard on my black macbook, which made it go to a blue screen until i re-installed it using the archive and install option, and the preserve user settings and networks option. I was attempting to access some applications from my dock, and they were saying that i couldnt use the application with this version of Mac OS X. Anyways i looked in my applications folder, and I now seem to have some triples of apple applications. One copy is in the previous system folder, and two in my current applications folder, one of which does work. Do i need all of these, or will it wreck anything if i delete them from the previous system folder or the ones that don't work in the current applications folder??? Very very grateful for any help... at all!!!

Alf Megson wrote:
Do you really want me to answer that question?
yes. I had to ask. I don't know you and I've seen way too many posts by people with similar problems who don't know that one has to empty trash to actually reclaim the missing space.
Boot from the leopard install DVd and repair the startup drive (not permissions). reboot and see if that makes a differences. if not try to find out what's taking all the space. see this post for tools for that.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8188595&#8188595
10GB should not be hard to find.

Trackpad no input after archive and install

Please help, i did an Archive and Install from the tiger 10.4 cd trying to resolve a problem with my iphoto wich was not working properlly, when i finished and enter again, the trackpad is not working no respose at all. What can I do?
I just realise that some of the functions of the keyboard are not working either, like the keys for the sound and the brightness
Message was edited by: fnietoelgazi

If you have an external Apple USB keyboard and mouse, you may use these to
see if the iBook has a hardware issue in relation to the symptoms you've noted.
If the computer is booted from the Installer disc and you can run Disk Utility from
the menu bar options (short of running the actual installer) which appear, you
may be able to see if the keyboard and trackpad work when the computer is not
running from the installed system on the hard disk drive.
There may be an issue with the operating system; it could be traced back to the
hard disk drive, and if so, perhaps these new symptoms relate to a failing HDD.
If you have the original system Apple Hardware Test for that computer, you may
be able to start the computer from that disc, and see if there are any tests which
may yield trouble or error code messages.
If the computer is running a newer system than it shipped with the original disc
set which accompanied the computer when new would be needed to get the
Apple Hardware Test to work, there isn't one on a retail OS X install disc. If the
hard disk drive has errors on it that Disk Utility can't fix, it may be repaired by
a more aggressive tool such as Disk Warrior; or Drive Genius2, but these are
tools best owned and understood. Could be this new system folder is another
problem and not an answer to an existing problem, if the drive has bad data.
An external USB keyboard & mouse is helpful in troubleshooting a portable computer.
I try to have at least one spare available, and run my iBook G4 as a desktop with a
external USB white Apple keyboard and optical mouse; and powered USB hub.
Look into troubleshooting this; see if the booted system installer's Disk Utility can
tell you the status of the computer's hard disk drive; the SMART status, and the
amount of free space remaining. Could be the drive is overfull and in a bad way.
(If you need to, you could access the computer's hard disk drive via FireWire
Target Disk Mode to see about saving files you may want off of there, to another
Mac computer. Read up on FireWire Target Disk Mode, searchable in Support.)
Good luck & happy computing!

Lost MPEG-2 after archive and install

I bought and used the MPEG-2 playback component but MPEG Streamclip no longer believes it is installed after a recent archive and install of Leopard.
I still have my confirmation email of purchase, but there's no indication as to how to reinstall or repair MPEG-2.
What do I need to do to restore Quicktime and especially MPEG-2?

I'd recommend saving your (paid-for) QuickTimeMPEG2.dmg file on your local disk. This would go for any software you pay for and then download online, especially if it can be accidentally wiped out by an OS upgrade.

After Archive and Install 10Gb of disk space has disappeared!

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