Available disc space reduces over 2 -3 days - performance drops

Hi
27 inch intel Imac that has <> £62Gb of spare disc space. Without any downloads or significant chnages the avaiable space reduces over 2-3 days to next to nothing with a corresponding reduction in performance (can take up to 80secs to open from sleep mode)
Restart restores avaiable space and performamce for a few days.
Apple support have run a few tests (disc repair, permissions etc and a re-index) - All completed but no improvement - any ideas?

Hi
If it happened to two servers at the same time then I'd be looking off box for problems.
- Check whether your CCMs were stable (use RTMT and check for events at the time)
- Run a 'show spanning-tree active detail | i VLAN|hange' or similar to check for STP topology changes on the VLAN the servers are in. Short outages caused by bad port configs in the VLAN can cause CCX/IPIVR to get upset briefly and fail over when communication between different processes on the same box fall over; it can be very sensitive. Maybe also do a show log on the switches to see whether any other significant events happened at the same time.
Regards
Aaron
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Available disc space is incorrect

I think something is wrong with my MBP (2011, Mac OSX 10.7.5).
It seems to be working ok but I think the available disc space is incorrect.
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I did not erase any large files, nor did I disable the local backups in the terminal. Can anyone tell me if something is wrong with my harddisk? I rebooted but the number is still the same.

Thanks for your input, Ogelthorpe. I appreciate it!
I do believe though that it has something to do with the local backups. The local backups are 125 GB now, the available disc space according to 'about this mac' has gone up to 107 GB, and finder window says the available disc space is now 232 GB (and again: 125 + 107 = 232).
Today I did not move any files or delete any files, in fact, I did not use my Mac for about 8 hours. So how did the available disc space go up from 77 GB (last night) to 125 GB when I did not delete / change anything?
It might have something to do with the fact that a few days ago I downloaded about 50 GB's, I copied it to an external harddrive and deleted the files from my Mac then. Perhaps 'versions' of those files (about 1,2 GB each) still exist in the local backups.
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[Solved] Pacman mounts partition on checking available disc space

Hi, hope this is the right subforum.
First, pacman doesn't directly mount any partition. My partition, located at /dev/sdb1, is automounted if somenone request access to /media/datengrab. Fstab-entry looks like this:
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Thanks in advance
Last edited by D4ve (2012-10-04 15:15:53)

Because the diskspace checking behavior in 4.0.x is quite naive. I fixed this a while ago so that only the mount points being written to will be actually checked. Stay tuned for pacman 4.1.

Encore not using full available disc space

So. I frequently burn DVDs with Encore with timelines that are 2 hours or longer. Beginning in CS5, Encore would start only using up 4.2GB of space even though the size of my disc image was 4.7GB. Before the material is rendered, Encore says it's using all 4.7GB, with a few MB left over. But once it's done rendering, sometimes there's an extra 500 MB unused. It doesn't always happen but usually does. If I click around in Encore a bit, the disc info panel updates to show all the extra unused space.
This was not the case in any previous version of Encore. Tech support people tried to tell me this was a feature, that Encore was now including 10% of buffer space. What an idiotic feature, but ok, whatever.
So I started trying to fool Encore by setting the disc size to 5.2 GB. And most of the time I'd come out w/ an image using all the available space on the DVD. Except, that doesn't always work. Right now I have a project that's 1 hour 45 minutes. When I render a disc of 5.2 GB size, that's exactly how much space the disc image takes up. Ok, so I re-render at 4.7 GB. Nope, it's gonna do 4.22 GB. WTF??? And then sometimes, for no clear reason at all, Encore will make a 4.7 GB image without me changing a thing.
If this was really a feature, it's not implemented consistently, and then why tell me my disc is using 4.7 GB before rendering if Encore has no intention of using that much space.
I brought this problem up back when CS5 came out--I talked to senior-level support people about it--and can't believe that two versions later it hasn't been fixed. It's wasting incredible amounts of my time.
The cycle hasn't ended for as long as I've been buying Creative Suite...every version, lots of my long-standing frustrations are fixed, but Adobe manages to screw up one big thing. And I give in and pay for the next version in hopes that it gets fixed...but something else then gets screwed up. Another several hundred dollars later and now I guess I have to wait for CS7 to maybe have this work correctly.

pezley wrote:
Using Disk Utility I deleted the 2nd partition and merged the two. Disk Utility reports it now as one 120gb partition
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
In Disk Utility, if you select that drive and the "Partition" tab, what do you see as the partition arrangement?

Increasing bit rates to maximize available disc space.

I am loading up HD footage to burn to a dual layer SD DVD.
I have an 82 minute feature film that I burned and used about 5 gigs of space on the dual layer DVD.
Here's the issue: If I have an 8 gig dual layer disk and only use 5 gigs, I am leaving 3 gigs idle which I would like to use to get the most quality possible. The problem is that I get capped at bit rates of about 7.1 mbps average and 10 mbps maximum (this limits me to only using 5 gigs). If I can increase the bit rate, I can use the idle disk space and, more importantly, get better picture quality. The problem is that I don't know how to get beyond the mbps cap limits. Is there a way?
I hate to leave the gig space idle. It feels like I am walking away and leaving money on the table.
Thanks
Jim

David, the cost of the DVD is not what is driving this (DVDs are very cheap), rather the desire to get the best picture quality as possible for my movie is driving this. By using the remaining 3 gigs of space, I can put more information on the DVD, compress less, and get better picture quality.
You ask "have you tried to play this 10mb file of yours? Can't be done on 99% of DVD players." I did burn it and play it on my DVD player and it worked just fine. I just want to see if I can't get a better picture quality by using the idle 3 gigs.
As far as a blu ray system - yes I do want one. Finding one that is compatible with a mac system, burns reliably, and produces blu rays that will actually work on most blu ray players probably won't happen for a couple of years at least. Not to mention the fact that blank blu ray disks costs about $20 each, so I will be adding $20 to each festival entry fee for my movie by using blu ray and that assumes they all burn perfectly with no waste involved.
If I can't increase the mbps rate, then I suppose I am stuck with what I have. I just want to know if it can be done better.
Jim

Yosemite movie files deleted and transferred not showing as available disc space

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When you say that the HDD isn't showing up in Disk Utility, do you mean that it isn't showing up on the left hand side of the app like in this picture?

Disc space on external hd vanishes

Hi all,
any help on the two following problems is greatly appreciated:
I have a MBP (Leopard) to which I periodically connect various external USB-harddrives for backups, photo-editing, etc. I keep having two issues that I haven't been able to resolve by searching the forum and the web:
1) Two of the hds are small pocket USB-drives (Western Digital 320 GB, Medion 160 GB) which are formatted in FAT32. To my knowledge, I should be able to read and write, as well as delete, with the disc adjusting the available space. Unfortunately, the drive will not render previously occupied disc space. I.e. when I copy a 40 GB photo-folder from my internal HD to the external 320 GB one, and afterwards delete it, the disc space is still indicated as used in the info-tab, and the available disc space is still down to 280 GB. I've come as far as to not having enough disc space for my needs, but also don't have enough space available on either hd to back everything up on one and reformat. I am, however, not convinced anyway that this would solve the problem as the discs were formatted using my own MBP the first time around as well! Also, it seems to be a systematic error, because it's happening to both drives (they're both fairly new, < than 1 year old).
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<a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/catacombae/NTFS-3G_20 09.4.4-catacombae.dmg
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Hi neuroanatomist,
many thanks for the swift reply - I did as you said and was in fact able to free up the missing disc space, big YAY!
I do have a quick follow up question though, if I may:
I simply went ahead and emptied my trash whilst having the two external USB-drives connected (as you suggested). If I wanted to, however, for whatever reason not delete my MBP-trash, is there any other way to get rid of the invisible .Trashes folder (or empty it, if that's the more practical/desirable solution)? I have to admit that I wasn't even able to find/see the folder, because I do not know how to make invisible folders visible in this case...
As for the commercial software: I will give it a try if I have not figured out another way by the end of the week. So if anyone else has a suggestion as to how I could solve the problem without spending any money, I'd still be grateful for a quick shout.
Again, thank you neuroanatomist!! (EDIT: ....and JoeyR, of course :))
Message was edited by: buckykatt02

LOST DISC SPACE...

I've been making movies (transferred from old home movies on VHS-C video tape) in iMovie, and then burning them in iDVD. After I'm finished burning the discs for each movie, I delete the movie files which default to my 'movies' folder, in order to regain disc space. But I've noticed that I'm still losing a significant amount of disc space. I began with 42 GB of available space, created three 20GB movies, (deleting each one after it's respective burn) and I've noticed that now I'm down to 34GB (instead of 42GB) available disc space, even though I've deleted the movie files. Is there some other place that date is being stored/saved/archived and robbing me of disc space?
Thanks in advance,
Donagh

As you have found: The default location for movies is the Movies directory. The default location for iDVD project files is the Documents directory.
I have no idea how they got there
When you created and saved an iDVD project, it was saved in the Documents directory (unless you selected someplace else).

Available Hard Disc Space

I have an iMac4 which I bought a year ago with 500 Gb of hard disc space. I had an iBook with 40 Gb of space and when I got my new machine I transferred all the info across straight away. The strange thing was that I then appeared to have used about 250 Gb of the space on my new HD. This has puzzled me for tha past year! How does 40 Gb expand on transfer to take up nearly 250 Gb of space??
I have just looked through some past posts and downloaded 'WhatSize' to see if that can shed any light on the problem. Unfortunately it hasn't! It is telling me that I have a capacity of 465 Gb, I've used 281 Gb and have 183 Gb available. There is nothing strange or startling on my Mac. I have MS Office 2001, some itunes and some photos. Nothing outrageous as we just use the Mac for normal, low level family stuff.
'What Size' show that that the HD is using the following space:
24.9 Gb Users
9.83 Gb Library
6.93 Gb Applications
2.82 Gb The Sims 2.localised
1.64 Gb System
1.96 Gb private
513 Mb usr
388 Mb Applications (Mac OS 9)
Those are the main ones followed by a list of others (about 15) none of which takes up more than 240 Mb. When I add up all of the above it makes about 50 Gb. Where's the other 230 Gb gone?!!!
I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light on this for me.

Hi Alun,
Apple stopped selling iMac G5s in Jan 2006 so it seems odd that it's only a year old. I suspect that you have an Intel iMac. Could you check the processor in  > About this Mac.... Thanks.
465Gb is the correct figure for your hard disk. Data is stored in a binary fashion but hard disks are sold in decimal notation. The conversion calculation for Gigabytes is
(500 x 10003) / 10243 = 465.66Gb.
regards
mrtotes

Why is photoshop taking up so disc space over time when using?

Hi. I was just doing some basic stuff like masking and what not. and suddenly my system tells me i've used up all of my main drive's space (I had about 10GB free). I am curious as to what is taking up this space and how to I clear it. And also can i shift it to my other drive which has 700GB free.

You mean you have a miserly 10 GB of available drive space on your boot drive? ?? !
If that's what you're saying you are indeed in a heap of trouble! Those 10 GB will have to be shared by both the swap files of the OS and Photoshop scratch files. That is insane. Whenever any hard drive gets to be over 80% full, you are already in trouble.
The rule of thumb I follow to figure out scratch space for Photoshop alone says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open. I have seen the Photoshop scratch file exceed 800 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.
As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS. I also have 16 GB of RAM installed and I'll be increasing it to 32 GB by the end of this year.
Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.

Haven't gotten any email for 2 days because of no disc space-how do I fix this?

haven't reeived any emails for 2 days-a popup tells me i havent got enough disc space left-how can I fix this?

For future reference:
When you get an error message , it is useful to know exactly what the error message said...word for word, as this helps to determine what caused the error message.
The links provided by Airmail offer very good advice on how to maintain a healthy Thunderbird.
Compacting removes hidden 'marked as deleted' emails, thus freeing up space.
'''Advise:'''
Look in each folder including 'Sent' and delete any unwanted emails.
Empty the Junk and Deleted folders.
* right click on folder and select : eg: Empty Junk
Then compact all folders:
* File > Compact Folders.
Archive all emails, both Sent and Received that are older than a couple of months.
Set up Archiving Options first.
* Right click on mail account name and select: 'Settings'
* Select; Copies & Folders' for the mail account
* Click on 'Archive Options' button.
* Set 'Archive Options' to monthly archived folders (if you send on a regular daily basis) and select to 'keep exisitng folder structure of archived messages'.
* click on OK.
* Click on OK to save settings.
then Archive any emails in Inbox, Sent, and any other folder thats older than a couple of months.
Archiving still keeps emails viewable via Thunderbird, but they are moved out of the regular folder, so releasing space in original files.
'Tools' > 'Clear recent history'
You have not mentioned if you have an IMAP gmail account.
If you do, have you subscribed and synchronised the 'All Mail; folder ?
'All Mail' is gmails Archive folder, so it keeps a record of every email. This means it will double the size of your Profile folder.
It is advised that you do not subscribe to see this folder.
To remove stored emails in the All Mail mbox file follow advise from this link...scroll down to the 'All Mail' section:
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_Gmail_with_Thunderbird_and_Mozilla_Suite
Once you have done all this organising, deleting, compacting and general maintenance, do you still get an error message?

G4-OSX10.2.8- Loses disc space until apps crash

Hi -
As I run applications throughout the day, my computer seems to lose disk space rapidly, until the applications start crashing and I have to restart.
For example,
6 am - Start computer, do a command i on the HD - it says 3.5 GB available
6:01 am - start photoshop/illustrator, I look at the OSX HD - it says 3.1 GB available
7:00 am - start InDesign, quit Photoshop, says 2.6 GB available
7:30 am - illustrator/InDesign start "Unexpectedly Quitting"
8:00 am - All programs are closed - my drive says 2.2 GB available...
So - I restart, and then it happens all over again (although with all programs being used - this is just an example)
I've ran Disk Warrior/TechTools/Apple Disk Utility/Verified Permissions/ - until all errors were gone (several times) and Optimized the drive.
Any thoughts on what could be causing this and/or what I could do to fix it?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Tricia

I know that OSX uses HD space for Temp Files and Cache Files and Virtual Memory when your Main RAM gets low from Apps.
I know specifically with Photoshop you can set it in the prefs of as to how Much Disc space it uses for its Temp use. Also in the photoshop prefs you can set how much Ram you want it to use as well.
If you got 768MB RAM and your Photoshop is using at default 512MB for the app, then your OSX might slow down, as it has less RAM to use, therefore the HD gets used up for VM use and Temp/Cache files are created.
I go into photoshop and set via its Prefs to use no more than 150MB. come on unless you are editing 200MB Image files with 20 different filters, not many people will need Photoshop to use that much memory.
Also I use an app called Macaroni, it lets me run my cron scripts anytime I wish. Using Macaroni allows me to clear out my systems Temp/Cache files (daily/weekly/monthly), especially if you dont leave your Mac on at night.
if you regularly turn off your OSX Mac at night, its likely the Cron utility scripts are not running, which means your Systems Temp Files and Cache Files are building up enough so that your are losing valuable HD space.
Another app that could help is System Optimizer X. It has some features that let you manually clean out your Cache and Temp files without using the terminal.
as for more RAM. more the merrier. I put 2GB in my G4 Dual MDD and it runs faster and snappier than it ever did before.
RAM is cheap now. 2yrs ago when I bought a 512MB DIMM for my Mac it was almost $90. 2 months ago when I upgraded from 1GB to 2GB, I got 2x 512MB DIMM's for $45 each. your Mac will love you for it...and do yourself a favor dont buy "cheap quality ram" Crucial sells some of the best quality Apple RAM...I learned that the HarD way.
one last tidbit, am curious why you partioned the Heck out of your 80GB HD? maybe your Mac is getting confused with all those partitions. HD's are cheap too. You can get a 120GB int ATA100 for around $60 now, keep your main Hd for the system stuff and main apps, and use your new Hd for storage and files.
Oh and Good Luck.

Just recently I'm showing that I've lost a very large amount of disc space for no apparent reason?

I have 750GB MacBook Pro and up until the other day I showed 250GB used and 500GB unused. I discovered this because the past two days my computer would just freeze and I couldn't do anything. So I ran the Disc Utility and it found some errors and fixed them. So I'm wondering if the 400GB of lost disc space now has something to do with the computer locking up? I've searched all the folders and added up their size and still come back to 250GB that I can see. So I'm assuming there's something hidden somewhere that's eating up over half my hard disc space? HELP!

BNK12 wrote:
So somewhere I have between 450 - 500 GB's taking up my disk space?
Yes, exactly. The total used, per the sidebar, is 735 GB, but the total at the top is 269 GB, leaving 466 GB unaccounted-for. As mentioned in the Other large files section of the Where did my Disk Space go? article, the similar free apps don't show things the logged-on user isn't permitted to see. Unfortunately, the version of WhatSize on the AppStore doesn't, either. A few of those are detailed in the green box.
First, have you Verified your internal HD, per the link in the yellow box at the top of the article? If not, do so. If that doesn't say your disk "appears to be ok," follow the instructions there to start from your Recovery HD and Repair it, then have WhatSize re-measure your drive.
If that doesn't help, do you have more than one user account (besides the 230 GB bkundinger)? If so, log on to the other(s), use WhatSize to see how large those home folders are, and add them to the 269 GB total.
If not, or if that doesn't explain the difference, you need to be able to see everything. Probably the best way to do that is with the version of WhatSize that you get directly from the vendor -- just click the link in the green box or go to http://whatsizemac.com. That version has the "As Admin" icon in the toolbar, per the sample in the green box. Click it and enter your Admin password, then have it re-measure your internal HD.
That will take a few moments, of course, but the resulting display should show everything, including the missing 466 GBs. As noted, don't delete anything you don't understand; if in doubt, post the new screenshot here.

How do i clean up start up disc space

I am getting a message saying that my start up disc is full. How do I clean it up?

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the Storage display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside a photo or iTunes library will corrupt the library. Changes to such a library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Ignore any other messages that appear in the Terminal window.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Diminishing Disc Space

My disc space keeps fluctuating daily, even overnight when the computer is off. I installed leopard when it came out onto my 2006 Macbook Pro and deleted the "previous system" a few days ago to free up disc space. The disc space increased only for a while and then went right back down to just over 10 gb. I've read that if the disc space is under 10 gb, that its a problem. My computer has been running slow lately and I suspect its from the disc space. I have also transferred most of my documents to an external hard drive. I haven't removed any caches yet because I am unsure as to which caches can be removed and what that will do to my computer. I have never noticed this problem of disc space in the past and I had much larger files (including movies) on the computer. Can anyone help??

Run Disc Inventory X and see what's taking up the space.
10GB of free space is OK but if you want to delete the cache files it won't hurt.
If you've been using Hibernation mode then there will be a large sleepimage backup file on their that's as big as your installed RAM, you can turn safe sleep off and delete this file if you wish.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070302210328928

Available disc space reduces over 2 -3 days - performance drops

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