Automatically hard disk is loosing its free space space

My macbook pro is automatically filling it`s free space....Now it`s showing "your start up disk is full"....
But i calculated the total files and folders, am using only nearly 200 gb...but my Harddisk have 320 gb capacity
I tried deleting some files of 8 gb....then it`s show 8 gb free space available ..again after sometime it shows "your startup disk is full" and available free space will below 1 gb.

Emptying trash is only recommended, if you are certain the data in the trash is no longer needed, or if uncertain, you have it backed up elsewhere. Many people drag files to the trash assuming it is safely stored elsewhere. One of the most common misconceptions is that items sent to the Dock or Sidebar are safely stored. This is not true, and if someone were to trash a file they dragged into the Dock or Sidebar, it would be gone for good unless backed up elsewhere as the full file and not just an Alias (Shortcut).

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Unusual hard disk activity after "Erase free space"

I have two partitions on my hard disk - a small partition for the system software and a big partition for everything else. A few days ago, I backed up a few files from my big partition and then used Disk Utility "Erase free space". Since then, my hard disk is behaving oddly. I can hear it, as if it continuously reading and writting data. At first, I thought it was an auto-update in progress or some sort of automatic system maintenance. But the odd behavior never stopped. I scanned my files with an anti-virus software - nothing wrong. I scanned my files with Disk Utility - nothing wrong. I used Onyx to check the system - nothing wrong. I even erased and reinstalled the system software - no changes! So what could possibly force my hard disk to behave like that? Is something messed up because of "Erase free space"?

You could run fs_usage
To view file activity for all processes with the fs_usage tool, you would enter the following at the Terminal prompt.
sudo fs_usage
If you wanted to limit the display to files accessed by a particular process, you could redirect the output through the grep tool. For example, to display file behavior for the TextEdit application, you would enter the following at the Terminal prompt:
% sudo fs_usage | grep TextEdit
Once your application finishes launching, stop fs_usage by typing Control-C in your Terminal window.
Look for all writes. Might be mdworker (Spotlight)
Try reindexing Spotlight by dragging the HD icon into the Privacy window. Leave it there for a minute and remove it using the minus button.

No Hard Disk Detected after Erasing Free Space

Hi ,
First I will explain the problem, I will be grateful for your help to solve it as immediately as possible. Thanks in advance !
I have a MacBook Black since 2007, with system specification, 160 GB Hard Disk, 1GB RAM, 2.16 GHz Intel Processor. I had a OS X 10.4.11 Tiger version. I need to upgrade it to 10.6 Snow Leopard. I bought OS X 10.6 DVD Snow Leopard version from Apple Store.
Last night, I save my all the data on external HDD, and tried to install 10.6, and it is installed over 10.4.11 with everything on the internal 160 Hard Disk. I did not want like that. I again started the installation process, I went to Disk Utility, I did some thing with partition, i.e. I created again 160 GB partition. Then I wanted to format, Then I saw some Erase Free Space and only Erase also, I click on Erase only, it is finished in seconds. but I was not satisfied. I saw button Erase Free Space then I click there, then , it takes about 90 minutes, and at the end, I saw a failure message that it could not create the temporary file or something like that I forgot what was written, however, it was a failure message ( it is failed to create etc ) .. ,
Then I saw, that there was nothing in the disk utility tool except the installing 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD. I was shocked, what happened.
Does some body could help me in this regard. How can I get the internal HDD with installation DVD ? What should I do after to erase everthing from my internal HDD, I mean , there should be nothing on it ..,
A big THANKS to you to solve this problem.
Best Regards,
Imran Khan
Macbook Black
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD
2.16 GHz Intel

Yes, I just played with Disk Utility, and in the end, I found nothing.
With the installer DVD, when I came upto Menu List, I click on Apple in the upper left corner, There are many menus but in grey, I can't click on them, e.g.
About This MAc
Software Update...
Mac OS X Software ...
Logout ...
I can't click them ,
Just for Info, In the Utilities Menu, the list is as below,
Startup Disk ..
Reset Password..
Firmware Password Utility
Disk Utility
Terminal
System Profiler
Network Utility
Restore System From Backup,
Here I click on the System Profiler Menu, After that, I go into deep, there are hardware list,
In ATA ... it shows only MATSHITADVD-R UJ-857E .. in detail it shows about the installer 10.6 DVD
and
In Serial-ATA .. it shows Intel ICH7-M AHCI ..
I did not find anything about internal HDD of 160 GB.

My external hard drive accidentally switched off during Disk Utility's "erase free space" process. I restarted the external hard drive and Disk Utility, but now I get the "couldn't mount disk" error when trying to finish the erase. Please help!

My external Lacie Quadra hard drive accidentally switched off in the middle of "erase free space", and when I switched it back on Disk Utility was hanging. So I Force Quit Disk Utility and restarted it. Now when I try to erase I get
"Secure Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk."
But "erase free space" seems to work...
What can I do? I'm erasing as I'm giving the drive to someone else and I wanted to wipe it clean.
Also should I use "erase" or "erase free space" if I want to wipe the drive clean?
Please help!

Sorry I don't really understand.... there are no partitions on the drive. How do I repartition it?
And should I use "erasing free space" or "erase" for wiping clean my drive of everything? Erase seems to be faster last tiem I tried.
Thanks!

Does Secure Empty Trash Accomplish the same task as Running disk util to wipe free space

Does using the secure empty trash option accomplish the same task as running disk util to eliminate free space from old deleted files? I'm currently running the 7 pass deal on my late '12 iMac. Says its gonna take 7 hrs. Can I use safari or iTunes while the Big Mac works its magic?

Does using the secure empty trash option accomplish the same task as
running disk util to eliminate free space from old deleted files?
No.
Finder > Empty Trash just tells the file system that those areas on the drive are now available for overwriting with new data. Data deleted off hard drives can be recovered if this method is used before it's overwritten with new data with special software.
Finder > Secure Empty Trash runs a 7x pass military approved overwrite only on the deleted files in the Trash, works for hard drives only.
Disk Utility > Erase Free Space creates a huge file that takes the remaining free space on the volume selected and either writes zeros or 7x pass, then confirms it and then removes the file. Takes a long time to complete, do not interrupt.
This can be used if one forgets to use Secure Empty Trash or wants to scrub caches or other files that don't necessarily go to the Trash for user deletion, such as program files that self delete and download cache files etc.
Only works for hard drives and there is no recovery possible for nearly all users. Those with special expensive magnetic equipment can possibly recover data off a zero pass, but not off a 7x overwrite.
The zero erase free space can be also be used to pre-eliminate potential unknown bad sectors on hard drives before wanted data is written to them, thus preventing future issues with data retention on hard drives.
Disk Utility > Erase - (not moving the slider) will erase all data on the volume or partition selected, including wanted data. It just tells the file system the deleted data is ready for overwriting. Thus can be recovered using special software before it's overwritten on hard drives only.
Disk Utility > Erase w/Security Option - (or moving the slider from the left) will secure erase all data on the volume or partition selected, including wanted data.
It can vary on the operating system version used from zero pass, to 3x overwrite, to 7x overwrite to 35x overwrite (old version for days past of smaller drives, don't use on newer larger drives as it will take weeks to finish.)
Secure erase methods are used to secure erase private data off of hard drives only, doesn't work for SSDs.
For secure data deletion off a SSD or any flash media, it's NSA advised to grind it into a fine powder.
How do I securely delete data from the machine?

Software Update reports...Your hard disk does not have enough space

<< Your hard disk does not have enough space-3 B is required to download and install the checked updates. Extra space is required for the optimization process. To free up space, remove files from your startup disk, then try again.>>
I've got 127GB free??!!

I ran the Disk Utility and it said that "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK." I tried to proceed with my software update and it still says I dont have enough space. I have 159.7GB availible and the error message says I only need 3.75GB of space. What do I do now?! Thanks in advance for your help!

Disk Utility Problems - Erase Free Space

Today I decided to use disk utility to "Erase free space " on my MacbookPro. During the process it said it was creating a temporary file!
This took about 2 hours then the application stopped responding, so I clicked skip and ended up doing a force quit!
Unfortunately, this task did not complete but it seems to have added over 10GB to my hard drive.
Any ideas how I can find the file and delete it or should I consider restoring my Mac to yesterday using my Time machine backups.
Thanks
Keith

However, does anyone have any advice on how to use the "Erase Free Space " Utility
This option should only be used when you've insecurely deleted a file you meant to securely delete, and should not be used on a FAT32 drive with 4GB or more free space.
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Disk Utility's "Erase Free Space" screwed me over big time. Help Please.

Hey, I have a serious dillema. I free'd up disk space on my mac by transfering files to an external drive, and then used Disk Utility to erase unused disk space to do a thorough cleaning. Now it seems that out of thin air, Disk Utility said my Mac is out of disk space....it basically filled up my hard drive with 370GB's of god knows what.
Here's exactly what I did, step by step:
Basically, I wanted to clean up my hard drive a bit, as I was using about 500GB's out of my 750GB HD (on my MBP 10.6.8)
-Before I did this test, I did a verify + repair disk permissions, I also organized my computer's files... and just to be safe, I booted up from the D key so I could do an extended hardware test to see if everything was running smoothly. I then zapped the PRam. This was my pre-clean maintenence check.
-Then I transferred all of my files onto my external disk.
-After this was done, I dumped the files (that I used to transfer to my External) into the trash bin.
-I emptied the trash bin.
-Now I free'd up hundreds of GB's of space.
-It said that I had 376 GB's of free space in my hard drive. Yay.
Now here where it all went wrong:
-I heard that if you go into Disk Utility, and click on "Erase Free Space" that it goes over all the delted files (that aren't actually permanently deleted) and it permanently deletes them so that it frees up all the loose ends on your mac. I didn't want any ghost files, or any old installs or whatever...so I thought, yes.
Now...Disk Utility was doing this for me....and 2 hours later....it said that I was out of disk space. Disk Utility froze around the 90% completion-mark when it was "Creating Volume" (or something like that) and I had to quit Disk Utility.
Then, I exited....went onto my desk top and checked my Hard Drive.
It said that I had ZERO KB's available.
My hard disk was completely full. How is this even possible? I had 376 GB's of EMPTY space 2 hours earlier.
I tried to go into all of my files to see if there were any duplicates made..I checked terminal to see what went wrong, I checked console...I searched, and I searched...and nothing.
What. The. Heck.
Can someone please, please help me?

Boot from your installation disc, erase the internal drive in Disk Utility, reinstall OS X, copy the files from your backup, and then run Software Update.

HARD TO SOLVE - User account free space and HD free space do not match

Hello.
I just upgraded my iMac from a 320Gb to a 1Tb, so as to have more space (obviously). The APR did install the HD since I did not want to mess myself with the hardware (I'm clumsy). I then reset the data via TimeMachine since all my files are in a filevault protected account.
I now have a problem they cannot solve. My user account (there's only one account on the whole computer, let's call it XYZ) is protected by filevault. In the user account XYZ there are only about 100Gb of space left, whereas the LocalHD clearly shows that there are more than 475Gb left on the LocalHD. I cannot turn off filevault as it keeps saying that I am missing about 370Gb of free space to turn off filevault.
And I need more space in my user account XYZ for various reasons, one of them being synchronisation over internet et caetera. Does anyone have a solution which does not consist in moving every single file manually to a new user account?
My guess was that the filevault account XYZ is limited by size since it comes from the old HD which was only 320Gb, but even that makes no solution, as it occupies a lot more than 320Gb at this point (my iTunes lib is bigger). As I said, the Luxembourg APR have no idea how to solve this issue, I would be more than glad if one of you had a solution to trick the filevault account XYZ into believing it had more space allocated (I'm not that used to the terminal, it may be the key to the problem).
Thank you so much in advance,
Laurent

Hi,
My guess was that the filevault account XYZ is limited by size since it comes from
the old HD which was only 320Gb,
Yes, I think this is what happened - see
*Mac OS X: FileVault-protected Home shows less capacity than what's available on the hard disk*
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24068
but even that makes no solution, as it occupies a lot more than 320Gb at this
point (my iTunes lib is bigger).
At least in Snow Leopard, when you create a FileVault account the "potential capacity" of the FileVault volume contained in the sparsebundle is twice the size of the underlying HD! Obviously that capacity could never be realized, since the sparsebundle could not grow larger than the HD that contains it. So for example, my startup HD volume capacity is 320GB. If I create a test Filevault account named "fv" and Get Info on the FileVault mounted volume (the icon in the sidebar), it shows an apparent capacity of 640GB! The reported Used space is apparently artificially inflated so as to make the actual available space seem correct:
The normal fix for your situation is to turn off Filevault and then optionally turn it on again, but you currently don't have enough free space on the HD to do this. The FileVault sparsebundle is supposed to self-compact when you log out of FileVault, and so compacting it manually may not help. If you do try this via a Terminal command, I think you will have to do it as root - I could not directly access a FileVault sparsebundle from a different admin account.
The support article above suggests:
If you do not have sufficient free space on your hard disk, you will need to temporarily reduce the size of your home directory, for example by copying a large amount of data in your home directory to an external hard disk, then deleting the stuff that you moved from your Home. After copying, log out or restart so that FileVault can reclaim the unused space.
This seems safe, though time-consuming.
An alternative approach would be to try to directly resize the FileVault sparsebundle and its contained volume. This can apparently be done, but is obviously risky since if something goes wrong you could easily lose everything in the Filevault account. I did some experimenting and was able to increase the size of my test FileVault home volume to 1T by logging out of the Filevault account, logging into a different admin account, and then using this Terminal command:
sudo hdiutil resize -size 1000g /Users/username/username.sparsebundle
Here <username> is the name of the FileVault account. I was asked first for the current logged-in admin account password (for the sudo) and then for the password to access the sparsebundle, which is the password for the FileVault account. This seemed to work (it took some time to complete), and I was then able to re-log into the Filevault account. The sidebar Filevault icon Get Info now showed a capacity of 1.07 TB.
But again, this seems risky - I can't recommend trying it except perhaps on a backup clone.
Message was edited by: jsd2

DPM Data Disks Replaced Now 0 Free Space

DPM 2010 - To cut a long story short, the data array that holds our DPM had some failed disks and we have now replaced the disks, with the same model/type etc, and they have all been wiped, Windows now can see we have a 19TB E drive (same as before) However,
DPM thinks the disk is still full, shows all the space as been used. How can we get DPM to update its self and see that the disk array is empty ?
Thanks.

Managed to sort it, deleted the disk in DPM and in computer manager and then scanned for disk in DPM and re added it and now shows as 100% free space.

What I should do if hard disk don't have enough space on macbook air

I have a pop up message box said " your hard disk don't have enough free space" when I try to do solfware update. What should I do? How can I delete some file on my hard disk?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

Disk Utilities - Erase - Erase Free Space

I did this, then had trouble getting the space back. I then searched and figured you have to restart and empty your trash bin. I originally had about 30GB of space but now I have 15GB. I have searched forever and cannot fix this problem does anybody know how to?

What I mean is that in whatsize the amount it says is used on the disk to the amount I added up from all the files it shows is different.
I was running erase free space to so the files I deleted were deleted permanently.
So what has happened after I've gone through the steps and deleted the large temperary file is I am missing a bit over 15GB of space on my hard drive. I remember looking at the size of the temperary file before deleting it and it was about 32GB in size. I also remember that being the amount of free space I had before doing the erase free space procedure.
So my question is: does anyone know how I can recover these 17GB of space I used to have?

I have macbook pro 13.3 inch ..mac os lion 10.7.5 i want to tranfer data from macbook to external hard disk without loosing data which in already in extrnl drive

i want to take back up of my macbook . so i have external hard disk around 1 tb and already have 230 used ...when i transfer manually with out time machine ....because i want to tranfer into windows .....so how to change ntfs into fat32 without loosing data in external harddisk ?

You don't have to change NTFS to FAT.
Just install Paragon NTFS and you'll be able to transfer your data to your external HDD even if it is NTFS.

HT3680 How to get my free space back after quitting the disk utility's erase free space

Hi,
I started the DU's erase free space--fastest way method. When it almost completed, I had a pop up that said that I need to free up disk space.
So then i was flustered enought to just quit the program because I didnt want to free up disk space and I was frustrated.
Not knowing it would still keep whatever it was that took the remaning disk space on my Mac.
How to I get this removed so I am back to before?

Sorry I don't really understand.... there are no partitions on the drive. How do I repartition it?
And should I use "erasing free space" or "erase" for wiping clean my drive of everything? Erase seems to be faster last tiem I tried.
Thanks!

How to merge my disk partition with the free space

Hello! I have a macbook pro mid 2010 with Mavericks, I had 2 partitions and deleted one with the disk utility.
Now I want to expand the one that I have left but I can't, I cannot drag the corner of the partition because it is below of the free space.
I will post a picture so you can understand better. Also I tried using iPartitions but it won't let me make any changes. Thank you
I don't know if anyone can see the picture so i'm leaving a url: https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/505x387q90/745/WaiZID.png

You need to create a partition in the free space, clone the content of Macintosh HD 2 to it, restart from the newly-created partition, and delete the one currently listed as Macintosh HD 2.
(114068)

Automatically hard disk is loosing its free space space

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