Disk Full Message with External Drive?

I have a IMac, G5 and a Maxtor external 300 gig firewire hd that I've used for some time. Recently, while copying files, movie files that are 3 gigs I get a prompt that the Maxtor disk is full. I still have 189 gigs available on this drive and I'm only copying 3 gigs, so I know something is not right.
I have gone thru repairing disk permissions on my hard drive and using Disk Warrior on the external drive to rebuild directories, etc., but I'm still getting this prompt.
Does anyone know what I should do next?
Thanks so much!
L.

There is something wrong, and I have yet to hear of an external USB/FW case that doesn't have trouble almost.
OtherWorldComputing http://www.macsales.com/firewire/
Oxford 9xx based cases are freindly. WD MyBook, Seagate, etc not so much. And LaCie.... known for having trouble.
I would still run Disk Warrior. Why? because Apple First Aid is not as thorough, reliable - and isn't going to put Disk Warrior out of business when it comes to drive maintenance and repair.
Maybe the drive is read-only. Have you looked? Whatever you do, I would have on hand another drive to copy the contents off your drive, and reformat it.
Even when a disk is repaired and says there are no errors doesn't not mean everything is fine and perfect, only that it didn't detect a problem it is programmed to detect and look for. And over the years, is more like giving a second chance to backup files, and do an erase and restore.
The only thing that makes a drive Mac friendly is Mac Extended. And that the case is Oxford based (for USB/FW). There is no such thing as a PC drive and Apple Mac (unless an Apple RAID controller only supports a specific drive model due to firmware).

Similar Messages

My startup disk is full?!?! This has been happening for a while and I have dumped 4500 jepegs from iPhoto onto an external drive to try and free up space. I am still recieving the "Startup disk full" message. What more can I do?!?!

My startup disk is full?!?! This has been happening for a while and I have dumped 4500 jepegs from iPhoto onto an external drive to try and free up space. I am still recieving the "Startup disk full" message. What more can I do?!?!

Did you empty the Trash?
What size hard drive & how much free space. You should always have a minimum of 10-15% or more free space?
 Cheers, Tom

I keep getting "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files/documents to an external hard disk

Dear all,
What should I do? I keep getting the "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files and documents to an external hard disk.
Thanks a heap.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article.
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 reboot. 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. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your 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.
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. 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.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your 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.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo 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 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 ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the 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
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. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. 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.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning your files.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS 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 ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

'Disk full' message even though 14gb is shown as available by Finder

I've started to receive a 'Disk full' message when every indication shows that I still have over 10GB of hard drive space available. The bar at the bottom of the Finder window, the 'Get Info' screen, and Disk Inventory X all show that my space usage is about 10GB under the size of my available disk space.
The problem is not limited to an error message - web browsers will also sometimes refuse to download now because of 'disk full' issues. But if I try to copy files within Finder, it always works, up to the actual limit of the disk size. This suggests that something is going on with file management where both MacOS and my web browsers see that there is no space, but Finder is able to manage around it when I try to copy files. Is this a known issue? Are there large temporary files which are not reflected in the available disk space indicators?
I'm using an early 2011 MBP with 10.6.8, and the original 500gb hard drive. I did just upgrade to 8GB of RAM but it's not clear if this is related or a coincidence.

You are Confusing RAM = Memory.. with Disc Space = Hard Drive...
ZeroZeroZeroOne wrote:
I've started to receive a 'Disk full' message when every indication shows that I still have over 10GB of hard drive space available. ...
This is Not enough Free Space on your Hard Drive... You need at Least 10% or 25 GB (whichever is greater) for your Mac to Perform as expected...
Time to Clear Up some Space on your Hard Drive before it Freezes and becomes unusable...
See Here for starters...
http://macmost.com/what-to-do-when-your-hard-drive-is-full.html

Upon start up I get a start up disk full message and to delete files, now I only get a a blue screen on start up. How to I get past the blue screen and how do I delete files?

Upon start up I get a "start up disk full message, delete files". Now on startup I only get a blue screen. How do I get past the blue screen and how do I delete files.

That;s really not enough free space... you can use a tools such as OmniDiskSweeper to find out where your large files reside and begin pruning (or copying to an external if they're files that you want to keep).
One thing is certain - if you're going to continue your current usage you're certainly going to need to install a larger boot drive.
Clinton

Startup Disk Full Message Keeps Occuring

I'm new at maintaining our Xserve here at work. It seems that each day the serevr gets incapacitated because the Startup Disk space fills up. I keep deleting log files and other files that are temporary, but to no avail. I can free a Gig or 2 then a day or two alter it's full again. Is there something wrong with the configuration?

You found a disk-full message and, well, piled onto the thread. OK. There's a decent shot that there is no connection to the previous disk-full error, too. If you lift the hood and look at the Unix layers, there are a large number of files being written, and many differing triggers for general or for excessive disk consumption.
As was mentioned earlier in the thread, this likely isn't specific to Xserve hardware, and this is probably a generic Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server issue, too; something occurring within the Unix layer of the platform. Something writing a log. Caching. A run-away process. Etc.
Get the [Grand Perspective tool|http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net> as a start. That can show you where your space is going.
Also launch Terminal.app and use the shell commands:
find / -size 1k -print+
sudo du -sHh /*
mdfind 'kMDItemFSSize > 10000000'
The first shows files larger than 1K, the second shows disk space. There are commands around to sort this stuff, too; to rank your use as output by du. That last one, the mdfind command, is a (fast) Mac search command that works reasonably well as part of a pipe.
And 150 gigabytes? That's comparatively tiny. I'm running 750 GB drives on servers that are now three years old. Go get yourself actual disk storage devices. Smaller drives can sometimes be used for high performance, but SSD is infiltrating that usage. The tiny SAS disks that were sold with various Xserve boxes were built for speed and bandwidth (as HDDs go), and aren't so good for storage or for sharing the operating system installation with, for instance, users.
And if it's log files, have a look at what's going on as - as is typical with many of these cases - the log can be filling because there's an error somewhere. And the specific trigger for the error can by most anything. Do your due diligence as a Unix server administrator and find your big file(s) and have a look at what's going on with your Unix server, in other words.
Also try a few Google searches, as this problem is a common one, and there are any number of discussions around of various find and du and mdfind and other commands that can be used here. It'd be nice if there was an integrated and GUI-friendly mechanism within Mac OS X, but that's not available; it's add-on or Unix shell commands for now...

What does "Disk Full" message mean when trying to send mail?

I have recently been getting an error message when trying to send email using Entourage - "cannot send mail using this account, disk full". Quiting all applications makes no difference, get the same message. To send email again I have to restart the computer. Then everything is fine until the next time, maybe a couple of days or weeks later.
Any idea what the "disk" referred to in the message is? I have plenty of RAM (640 megs) and as I said earlier, even if I quit all open apps after getting the "disk full" message it makes no difference.
Thanks for any suggestions!
G3 Blueberry Mac OS X (10.2.x) Upgraded processor to 1000mz G4, OS 10.2.8

Hello! Usually the disk full message occurs because the hard drive is at or near capacity. The message has nothing to do with apps except for the "virtual memory or paging" aspect of OSX. Restarting probably clears out the paging file and possibly some other stuff which allows you to work for a while. Select the hard drive and do a "get info" on it to see hoe much space is available on the hard drive. FREE space should be 10-20% and anything less than 10% will likely crash the computer or choke it to a slow crawl. Tom

Start up disk full message but has 40GB available

I'm getting the Startup disk full message so I checked the HD, it's 80GB, when I click 'Get Info' the available disk space changes frequently from 45GB available to 0 available. I deleted the trash and I know the disk is not full and has around 40GB available. I'm not sure why the HD available space changes often. Any idea??
Thanks.

Assuming you have no CD in the drive, this does not sound good. Before doing anything further, I would highly recommend to remove the hard drive, set it in an external housing and see whether you can rescue your data when connecting theis HD to a different MAC.
Did you have FileFault turned on?

How to move Startup Disk clone from one external drive to another?

I thought this would be a question easily answered on the WWW and easily found via search engines, but so far no luck, hence this question.
Prior to upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion I followed some very good instructions from Tom Nelson on ask.com (http://macs.about.com/od/backupsarchives/ss/diskbackup.htm) related to using Disk Utility to clone my internal Macintosh HD drive to an external hard drive, making it a bootable drive. I cloned to a very nice LaCie external FW drive that had far more room than that needed for the clone. This drive booted just fine as a startup disk, so mission accomplished:   I have now a bootable clone of my Lion system prior to upgrading to Mountain Lion.
The upgrade to Mountain Lion went well, and now, before I put any additional apps or much additional data on the original internal Macintosh HD drive, I want to use Disk Utility again to clone the drive so I'll have a snapshot of the system right after the upgrade to Mountain Lion.
Questions:
Is there any way to use the same LaCie drive that now holds the Lion startup disk clone to hold the yet-to-be-done Mountain Lion startup disk clone?
If not, how can I move the Lion startup disk clone from the oversized LaCie external drive to a drive more the size of the Lion clone (approx 140G)?   The LaCie drive is far too roomy and nice to have sitting gathering dust for only 140G to be used in an emergency restore.
Thanks in advance for your advice.

Good info Csound1, and thanks.
So my final question (I think): How does one move/copy a startup disk clone from one external drive to another, and still have it bootable on the new external drive?   I'm still considering freeing this LaCie drive up for more dynamic storage and getting another drive for the bootable startup disk clones IF I can move this Lion startup disk clone to a new external drive.
I guess the summary question is:   how does one clone a startup disk clone? As I think about this, and recall the Disk Utility screens, couldn't I simply select the Lion clone on the LaCie FW external drive and do the same operation I did with the original internal Lion drive? Basically the same steps as before but this time the source is the LaCie FW external and the destination is a new external drive?
Thanks again; wonderful forum here with very smart people.

Finder crashes with External Drive on Sleep Mode

I purchased my new iMac 21,5" less than a week ago, and I haven't had a problem with it except for one that it's been bugging me a lot.
I have a LaCie 1TB Quadra d2 external drive that I use to store footage (since it's HD, the filesize won't fit in my 500TB internal hard drive), but I noticed that sometimes when LaCie external drive enters in Sleep Mode, the Finder freezes and the only two ways around this, is to force reboot, because the Finder won't answer and won't open again, or unplugging the external drive without ejecting him first, which it's not safe for me to do, because I'm afraid of hurting the device, and the files in it are pretty important.
This happens almost everytime, especially after a long time on sleep mode. I usually leave Final Cut Pro transferring files all night (since it takes a long time) so I kinda need the sleep mode, but when I wake up, Finder and Final Cut Pro won't answer.
I updated to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on day one. Is there a way to fix this? Is it normal? I read somewhere that some users were having trouble with external drives on Sleep Mode, but I can't seem to find any further information about this problem.
Thanks!

I've got a MacBook Pro 13.3" that's a little over a month old, with a LaCie 1TB LaCie d2 Quadra with USB 3.0, #301542U and I'm suffering the same problems and a few others with it. I've got a partition on it set up as my Time Machine backup drive. I've turned off the Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible in the Energy Saver preferences but I'm still having the sleep problem with it. According to the LaCie Manual:
By default, your drive will enter Eco Mode after 30 minutes of inactivity in order to conserve energy. To exit Eco Mode, simply access data on the drive and the disk will automatically restart. You can manage this feature using LaCie Desktop Manager. Click the Eco tab.
The LaCie Desktop Manager (in my case) only takes me to the Energy Saver Preferences in OS X to adjust the time there. Turning off Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible doesn't seem to make any difference, the drive still goes to sleep after 30 minutes. However, after 15 minutes the drive seems to wake back up, but then during the next 15 minutes goes comatose (no power light). Sometimes it will go through multiples of these sleep wake cycles without going into a coma, but eventually it does go into a coma. This happens in between hourly Time Machine backups.
After locking up Finder, Disk Utility and Time Machine multiple times trying to access the drive in this state I figured out that I could cycle the power switch to regain use of it (with a Finder warning of course) but this will only lead to file corruption eventually and I shouldn't have to resort to this. I've also dismounted it, expecting it to turn off and instead it goes into an extended spin down cycle (rapidly flashing light) and never turns off (or goes to sleep or what ever it's supposed to do) and once again requires turning the power switch off.
This is just too unpredictible and unrelable for me and as soon as I get the opportunity to do a 7 pass erase I'll be returning to the place of purchase. Based on the reviews of other external hard drives a drive from another company doesn't look to be much better of a prospect so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Serious problems after Mavericks installation with External Drive Lacie P9220.

Experiencing serious problems after Mavericks installation with External Drive Lacie P9220 1TB. Mac Finder totally locked!
I had to format the External hard drive with a Windows PC (fat32), then format again with my IMac (mac Journal.) and hopefully restored data from time machine backup.
So far so good but system looks unstable. Some software were not able to write on the hard drive.Some strange things happens. With Mountain Lion never had an even minor issue.
I read many discussion regarding problems with WD, just wondering if anyone had the same problems with Lacie and if there is any tip to solve the
problem.
Many thanks.
Marco

Thanks very much for your reply.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a solution because the article refers to whom have configured the drive with included software and drivers that came with the drive.
This is not my case, I never used any third party soft ...only OS X disk utility ...
best
marco

IMac won't boot with external drives attached

I am using iMac 27" Late 2013 model upgraded to mavericks 10.9.4. Two external drives are always attached with it, one is segate 3.5" 2TB USB 3.0 drive and another one is 2.5" usb 2.0 drive.
when i start my imac with external drives attached it won't boot up. Stuck at plain white screen after a startup chime, not even any apple logo or any progress circle appears. And i have to detach all of my drives to make it boot.
This problem arises after upgrading to mavericks. Already tried resetting PRAM, SMC and checked Startup disk and verify disk with disk utility.

Raja,
Do a SMC reset perhaps even a couple of times and see if that helps. Also in System Preferences + Startup Disk make sure the internal HD is selected.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.
Roger

ITunes, iPhone startup disk full messages

Since I got my iPhone 3G 2 weeks ago I have started getting "Startup Disk Full" messages. I then noticed that if iTunes is running, not downloading anything or searching for anything my remaining drive space starts to reduce until the messages. If I reboot this will give me back anywhere from 1 GB to 3 GB of drive space. I used to go for months without rebooting now I can't go a day. What would cause this? iTunes 8.0.2, OSX 10.5.5, iPhone OS2.2, Powerbook G4 1Ghz, 160GB drive, 1GB ram.

open up iTunes to see what is taking up the space.. is it applications/Media/Photos and delete appropriately. If not then you might have just hit a bug or installed some bad application.

Capacity available but still getting start up disk full message

Hi
I got the start up disk full message a few days ago. I did command i and ran Omnisweeper and deleted all the large files. I now have over 50% available capacity but my Mac is still running on slow and I still get the start up disk full message....and request to force quit.
Any thoughts on what I can do. Run idefrag?
Many thanks
Claire

We never asked for the serial number. I've asked it be removed. It is a link to your personal information which others can use to search about you.
Remove McAfee. It is only necessary if you run Windows.
Early 2008 models were not Intel CoreDuos. They might a have been Core2Duo, but not CoreDuo.
Your model if the serial number is correct, which I verified with:
https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do
is indeed a Core2Duo Early 2008 model by serial number.
Go to Apple menu -> About This Mac to verify you have a Core2Duo and not a CoreDuo, otherwise you are getting your serial number and processor information from two sources that got wrongly combined.
An Early 2008 model can upgrade to Mavericks and Mountain Lion. It can also install any version of Snow Leopard that is retail, and not system specific with a Mac model name on it. So your issue with file space is likely due to something else you installed. Not a virus per say, but probably something that eats up a lot of temporary space. I would run the machine overnight in screen saver, not energy saver model to ensure the logfiles get properly cleaned up. I'd temporarily turn off any backup software. And the next time you shut down, make sure not to leave any applications open, by checking command-tab that the Finder is the only open application before shutting down or restarting.

Start up disk full message/incomplete image

I just upgraded to iDVD 6 and am trying to burn a DVD. First time it rendered/encoded/burned all night and then some. I got a messsage that start up disk was full and to delete files. It resulted with an incomplete DVD (Moives were on, slide shows not). I freed disk space - Project info shows 2.8 of 4.2GB for project and 35.78GB available. I even used an older theme, thinking that might help. It churned for 12 hours+, and I got the same result (start up disk full/incomplete DVD). I have to deliver 20 copies of this by Friday. HELP!

don't know if this will help you at all but it helped me.. Using WhatSize - 10.3.9 at versiontracker allowed me to see where all my memory was going when I got that same disk full message. I have a new iMac and I didn't hink it was possible to be full up yet but a few of my undeleted iDVD slideshows were taking up gobs of memory... Make sure you empty the trash too... Once I made even more memory available I was able to burn again...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21149
iMac Intel Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Disk Full Message with External Drive?

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