Disk Space Disappearing -- 10.2.8

I have a G3 PowerBook running OS X 10.2.8. I've noticed that my disk space disappears for some unexplained reason, although it does seem to happen most often after my daughter has been playing games on disney.com. Does anyone know how to pinpoint where the disk space is going, and more importantly, how to get it back? I've got an external hard disk and have moved lost of programs off of my Mac, but the gains are short-lived.
Thanks for any help/suggestions.

If you go to "more options" in the Search pane (upper right of this page) and enter "disney" and then search "all categories," you'll find other reports of "concerns" with visiting the Disney web site. Some are obviously just plain paranoia but such a search might be useful.
I've been rehabbing three old G3 PowerBooks for a friend who knew nothing about the Mac OSX maintenance scripts. On one machine, simply running one of the scripts freed up 2GB of space on his 8GB boot partition (the Wallstreet G3 PB has the "Old World ROM" OSX boot partition limitation).
To learn about this useful function, please refer to this article:
Running the Mac OS X maintenance scripts
The scripts run automatically but only if your computer is turned on and not sleeping in the wee hours of the morning. Obviously, 95 percent of Mac users won't benefit as their computer are either off or asleep at this time of day. The article shows how to run them manually.
There is a freeware program called "WhatSize" that reports what is eating up disk space but I've not been able to get it to run on a G3 PowerBook under 10.2.8, Seems to need Panther.
You might post which G3 PowerBook you have; this Apple article will help you identify yours:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24604

Similar Messages

Why is my available hard disk space disappearing?

Hi,
Occasionally my hard disk space will start disappearing for no apparent (to me) reason. I'll have 15 gigs of available hard disk space that will disappear, and I'll get messages that I'm running out of disk space, interfering with what I'm doing.
After I restart my computer, it seems to reset, but I would like to stop it altogether (as, obviously, it's not always convenient to restart my computer in the middle of tasks.)
I tried Disk Utility, but it didn't find anything. Are there any other legit programs I should use to solve this and other general issues?
Or is it something I could fix myself (with only basic computer knowledge)?
Thanks!
L

1. Empty Trash.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
2. Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the dropdown.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Empty Trash. Restart.
3. Repair Disk
    Steps 1 through 7
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836
4. For more on this and very helpful tips:
    http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
    http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

The disk space disappears after bootcamp failed in deleting the windows partition.

Hardware: Macbook Pro 700
OS: Lion v10.7
1. I installed Windows 7 in my mac. The space of Windows partition is 80G.
2. Some dlls of Windows will always disappear and at last the Windows cannot be started successfully.
3. Yesterday I updated Lion and started the bootcamp to remove the Windows partition. But bootcamp throwed an error(I forget what the error is).
4. I started bootcamp again to try to remove the Windows partition, but there is only create Windows partition in the options.
5. I started the Disk Utilities and verified the disk. The reported result was that there were some errors in disk.
6. So I restarted the machine and pressed COMMAND+R and entered the Disk Utilities to repair the disk.
7. After repairing the disk, there are no errors in disk now. But 80G space disappears.
Now my whole disk is still 320G, but the mac partition is 238G.
How can I repair it? Please help me.
Some logs in system:
Mar 8 04:54:44 ko-hitoshimatoMacBook-Pro com.apple.kextd[10]: Error reconsidering volume /Volumes/BOOTCAMP.
Mar 8 04:57:25 ko-hitoshimatoMacBook-Pro fseventsd[18]: log dir: /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 399DDE3E-37D7-43A8-8BD1-049EF76C803F

Figured it out myself! I didn't have any ports open on my MBP for LAN access....
Bob

Disk Space disappears!

I recently was running low on space on my hard drive ( less than 2 gig remaining on the 75 gig drive) and decided to copy large files from my G4 Powerbook to an external drive, about 12 gigabytes, to free up space. I copied the files then dragged them to the trash and emptied it. The hard drive indicated that it had not about 15 gig available. All good right? Afterward when I rebooted, the memory was still down down on the hard drive, this time to near zero. I then unplugged the maching from the large monitor, rebooted again and then it showed that I had 11 gig available. So, I updated my software as per the latest apple updates and also checked permissions just to be on the safe side. All went well, and afterward I had 16 gig available. So I shut down, came in the next day and now have zero memory available again, can't even download my email. I have rebooted, unplugged, removed the battery, etc but still no memory available. Now I get an error message saying my startup disk is almost full and to delete files. All the files I originally deleted are still gone, 12 plus gigs, so I really don't understand this. Can anyone advise me why the files I deleted are gone but the disk space hasn't been freed up? I am running OSX 10.3.9.
Thanks

tnarg:
There are a number of possible explanations for your disappearing HDD space as the article Where Did My Disk Space Go? shows.
I suggest that you download and run the little utility What Size. Look for unusually large and unfamiliar files. My guess is that you have an expanding Console log file. If WhatSize bears that out follow roam's fix in the thread Self-expanding console.log files!!!
Please do post back with further questions or comments.
Cheers
cornelius

Disk space disappearing in Leopard

I had 16GB free before Leopard, did an upgrade install, so it took it's 5GB, and I was down to 11GB. Since then I've been leaking out disk space ever since. It got down to 1.6GB yesterday. I'm running File Vault so I let it compress space, and got back to 8.5GB this morning (note that's still 2.5GB that has disappeared). I've been watching it all day and it's gone from 8.5GB down to 7.06GB. I've download maybe a couple hundred megs of stuff.
What's going on? anyone else have this problem?

Allison,
As a follow-up to my earlier post to you.
I performed an 'erase and install' and the problem of vanishing space on my HD has gone.
I have run spotlight and restarted several times and the space on the HD has not reduced other than can be explained by my work.
Perhaps this also helps?
There is also something right about the 'erase and install' aside from the fact it solves (or so far) the issue. For other issues such as the "warning SUID file.." it has not however. I am using Leopard and enjoying it. I'm just being cautious and backing up to my external HD. If like me you do not have too many third party applications you can easily perform an 'erase and install' once you have backed up. I was able to import my e-mails and everything afterward. I used it as an opportunity to remove things on my HD that I didn't need and found I could gain more space on the HD as a result. One warning though it takes a while to re-install all the applications and so on. I had no idea I had collected so many external items i.e. software downloads, periphery apps, and so on.
Get advice before doing this though. I had someone at AppleCare explain before hand and I used my original 10.4 disks to erase the disk and reinstall Tiger. After setting everything up again I installed 10.5 from the Leopard installation disk. I installed it as a simple 'upgrade'. I suppose this may not be the same as an 'erase and install'. Again, I hope this helps.
Paul.
P.S. Be warned it takes hours (and hours) to complete this whole process.

25GBs of Disk Space Disappeared

I turned on my MBP today to find that I only have 1.7GB of free space. The last time I used my Mac I had about 25GB of free space. I ran JDiskReport and everything appears as normal. There are no new odd files or anything of that sort. How do I reclaim this missing disk space? What could've caused it?

Isaac Bardin wrote:
Believe it or not, Finder isn't very exact, and 25GBs may be added or disappear in Finder's estimation of how much free space is left.
No. Wrong. Incorrect. PLEASE stop posting these wild guesses. They can do more harm than good.
It's only an estimate of what is left.
No. Wrong. Incorrect.
One day I had 40GB left, the next day 18GB left, and then the next day 40GB again.
That's entirely possible, depending on what you (or your system) was doing.

Disk Space Disappearing

Hi my laptop's start-up disk keeps filling up without any new downloads. . . Is this some sort of malware?
I have attached a screen Shot of my situation. See the left tab is disk wave showing my main folders and sizes.
Note how the folders Under Users/ James (highlighted in grey) don't add up disk space dont add up to 214GB

A log file of that sort is usually trimmed automatically by the routine cron scripts - these can be run with OnyX, or another utility such as Mac Janitor (also downloadable from versiontracker). Alternatively, you can simply delete the log file manually or from within WhatSize.
Spotlight doesn't look in all locations - assuming that you have no need to search for files belonging to the system. Some of it's behavior in that regard can be set in the Spotlight preference pane.

Disk space disappearing - VSS?

Hi,
Disk space is being eaten up quite quickly on my CSVs and I can't see where its going. I think it might be VSS but how do I tell?
My environment is Server 2012 cluster with iSCSI storage on Dell EqualLogic holding the CSVs. It is being backed up by DPM2012 SP1 RU1.
I am getting diskspace warnings from the SAN that don't match up with whats on the disk. On a 3TB CSV, Explorer tells me there is 1.81 TB in use, Cluster manager tells me there is 777GB free (2.22 in use) but if I do properties on the volume it says
329GB free space which matches what the SAN is reporting.
How can I see what space is being used by VSS, and how can I recover some of this space, assuming it is DPM / VSS that is using it?
Cheers,
James

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the quick response.
I have 4 CSVs attached to this cluster, only one of them is showing strange growth. I don't have any hardware VSS providers installed, Im using the Microsoft VSS provider.
vssadmin list shadowstorage
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2012 Microsoft Corp.
No items found that satisfy the query.
vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2012 Microsoft Corp.
Contents of shadow copy set ID: {4a0c5c80-6388-40a9-98d5-7c955f589c50}
   Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 25/01/2013 10:03:00 PM
      Shadow Copy ID: {1440197b-9253-4879-8a88-b1660a2da8e3}
         Original Volume: (?)\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume29\
         Shadow Copy Volume:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy40
         Originating Machine: HPV02.CLOUD.Local
         Service Machine: HPV02.CLOUD.Local
         Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
         Type: ClientAccessible
         Attributes: Persistent, Client-accessible, No auto release, No writers, Differential
I've seen a few other people comment on similar issues here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dpmhypervbackup/thread/44cde22c-e404-485d-8e71-246525204208/ and here:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/starwind-f5/dpm2012-csv-and-hardware-vss-t3009-15.html "I'm having the same issue with the snapshots piling up."
Its an issue from growing my dynamically expanding SAN volumes unexpectedly and also I'm concerned about what will happen when the SAN volume gets full - will it pause my VMs or will my backups start failing?
Does Microsoft have any patches or fixes for this on the way?
Cheers,
James

Disk Space Disappearing After Today's Updates - Please help

Hi there everyone. I'm having major problems with my mac pro today, and for the first time, I cannot fix it. Please help me. I will try to explain what happenned. Like most, I was very excited about the release of ios 5 today. I downloaded the Lion 10.7.2 update, the ios 5 updates, iTunes and the iPhoto update. I installed of these without problems and then I enabled iCloud. I then decided to first update and restore my iPad 1 to ios 5. This worked perfectly fine and my computer was running fine. Then, I decided to update my iPhone 4 next. This is when I started running into problems. I updated it and then went to restore it from a a backup. This did not work, I got an error message that told me it was unable to restore the phone becasue it was unable to create backup.
So, I then checked the disk space for the main Lion drive and it was at zero. I thought, well I was sure I had at least a few gigs, but maybe I used them. So i deleted enough files to create 5GB of free disk space. I then tried to run it again, and I watched as my disk space slowly went down to zero again. I thought maybe it needed even more space than that. So I rebooted the machine and yet my disk space did not reappear. I had about 200mb when I rebooted. Then i noticed it was randomly fluctuating and went down to zero again. I then deleted another 3gb of files and created more disk space to try again. The same thing happenned again. I have now rebooted the machine again. When it first rebooted it had 500mb of disk space, it then fluctuated and went down to zero again. It is going between 67mb and zero every minute or two, and then goes up to 400MB, then reduces down to zero again. What is happenning? I have not opened any applications except for safari right now. Do we think there is a problem with my virtual memory or disk all of a sudden? It seems strange this happenned today. it must be related to one of the updates? I thought it might be icloud. So I have diabled that completely and the fluctuations have not stopped.
I would really appreciate any help anyone can give. I cannot think what the problem is. I cannot even run Techtool to check anything because nothing is working with no space for memory. Every time I delete files it goes down to zero anyway.
Thank you very much

How much space is your Other using? You may be able to reduce.
How Do I Get Rid Of The “Other” Data Stored On My iPad Or iPhone?
http://tinyurl.com/85w6xwn
With an iOS device, the “Other” space in iTunes is used to store things like documents, settings, caches, and a few other important items. If you sync lots of documents to apps like GoodReader, DropCopy, or anything else that reads external files, your storage use can skyrocket. With iOS 5, you can see exactly which applications are taking up the most space. Just head to Settings > General > Usage, and tap the button labeled Show All Apps. The storage section will show you the app and how much storage space it is taking up. Tap on the app name to get a description of the additional storage space being used by the app’s documents and data. You can remove the storage-hogging application and all of its data directly from this screen, or manually remove the data by opening the app. Some applications, especially those designed by Apple, will allow you to remove stored data by swiping from left to right on the item to reveal a Delete button.
 Cheers, Tom

Disappearing Hard Disk Space

For several days, I have watched my available hard disk space "disappear" before my eyes. I should have approximately 13 GB of free space available, but this number has gradually dropped to zero and then back up to 6 GB and currently hovers around 2-3 GB. This has happened over the last 3-4 days. I don't recall installing any new software, drivers, etc. A virus scan detected no viruses. Disk Utility detected no problems. System Profiler logs don't seem to show any processes that are unusually large and consuming. Where did my hard drive space go and how can I get it back?

Are you using File Vault?
Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Where Did My Disk Space Go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/770243/site_id/ 1
 Cheers, Tom

Mysterious lack of free disk space

Recently im having a problem with my free disk space disappearing in osx.
running a du command shows a 90GB file usage in my /Library directory, but i cant seem to find or access it anywhere
i enabled hidden files
also ran
sudo tmutil disablelocal
my free space disappears. nothing shows up in finder or other file manager programs.
server:Library peffy03$ sudo du -h -d1
Password:
2.6G          ./Application Support
361M          ./Audio
34M          ./Automator
12M          ./Caches
0B          ./ColorPickers
100K          ./ColorSync
0B          ./Components
0B          ./Compositions
0B          ./Contextual Menu Items
1.1M          ./CoreMediaIO
99M          ./Desktop Pictures
415M          ./Dictionaries
0B          ./DirectoryServices
30M          ./Documentation
0B          ./Extensions
0B          ./Filesystems
1007M          ./Fonts
3.7M          ./Fonts Disabled
65M          ./Frameworks
0B          ./Graphics
18M          ./Image Capture
0B          ./Input Methods
254M          ./Internet Plug-Ins
28K          ./iTunes
0B          ./Java
0B          ./Keyboard Layouts
164K          ./Keychains
20K          ./LaunchAgents
28K          ./LaunchDaemons
188M          ./Logs
5.2M          ./Messages
56K          ./Modem Scripts
0B          ./OpenDirectory
8.0K          ./PDF Services
564K          ./Perl
17M          ./PreferencePanes
384K          ./Preferences
647M          ./Printers
176K          ./PrivilegedHelperTools
0B          ./Python
18M          ./QuickLook
5.2M          ./QuickTime
84K          ./Receipts
0B          ./Ruby
0B          ./Sandbox
140M          ./Screen Savers
0B          ./ScriptingAdditions
1.1M          ./Scripts
4.0K          ./Security
84G          ./Server
0B          ./Speech
0B          ./Spelling
4.1M          ./Spotlight
0B          ./StartupItems
0B          ./SystemProfiler
76K          ./Updates
21M          ./User Pictures
0B          ./Video
4.3M          ./WebServer
45M          ./Widgets
90G          .

30 seconds later
97228896          .
91052984          ./Server
57021568          ./Server/PostgreSQL For Server Services
38736148          ./Server/PostgreSQL For Server Services/Backup
33686588          ./Server/ProfileManager
33686580          ./Server/ProfileManager/Data
29436852          ./Server/ProfileManager/Data/backup
18285404          ./Server/PostgreSQL For Server Services/Data
18235408          ./Server/PostgreSQL For Server Services/Data/pg_xlog
4249724          ./Server/ProfileManager/Data/PostgreSQL
4210716          ./Server/ProfileManager/Data/PostgreSQL/pg_xlog
2696628          ./Application Support
1441632          ./Application Support/GarageBand
1031416          ./Fonts
662968          ./Printers

HT201412 Have a problem with iPad2, apple logo appears but iPad won't boot up, then logo disappears & iPad dies - probably caused due to insufficient hard disk space (too many apps) - any help greatly appreciated

I have a problem with iPad2, apple logo appears but iPad won't boot up, then logo disappears & iPad dies - probably caused due to insufficient hard disk space (foolishly loaded up too many apps) - any help/advice greatly appreciated

What to Do When Your iPad Won't Turn On
http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad_Troubleshooting/ss/What-To-Do-When-Your-Ipad-Wo-No t-Turn-On.htm
iOS: Not responding or does not turn on
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3281
iPad Frozen? How to Force Quit an App, Reset or Restart Your iPad
http://ipadacademy.com/2010/11/ipad-frozen-how-to-force-quit-an-app-reset-or-res tart-your-ipad
iPad: Basic troubleshooting
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3274
Update and restore alert messages on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
http://www.buybuyla.com/tech/view/012953a0d412000e.shtml
iOS: Resolving update and restore alert messages
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1275
iPad: Unable to update or restore
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4097
 Cheers, Tom

Rapidly disappearing disk space - 19GB windowserver.log?

Hi,
I noticed that my disk space has been rapidly disappearing recently - now at the rate of 50-100MB per minute!!! Couldn't figure out for the life of me where it was going. I ran Disk Inventory X and it is showing that the file windowserver.log is currently up to about 19GB! I don't even know what this file is for but I know that it's not supposed to be THAT big. And continuing to grow every minute. After a restart I jump back up to about 43GB of free space but it doesn't last. Also the comp (MacBook Pro 2.16 Core2 Duo) is running really hot, currently between 145 and 150 F with only finder and firefox running. Can anyone tell me what is going on here?
Thanks.

Hi--
Go to your System Preferences and look at the "Accounts" preferences. Select your user account on the left hand side, then look at the "Login Items" tab. If you have any items there besides "iTunes Helper", make a note of what they are and delete them, then reboot and see if the problem goes away. If it does, add back your login items one by one and see if one of them causes problems again.
If you've installed new software recently, and see an item in that list that relates to you new software, just delete it and reboot, maybe it's just that one piece of software.
charlie

Lion disk space is disappearing on MacBook Pro

My 2009 MBP running 10.7.3 was running out of hard disk space. To the point of only 90MB available. Did all of the normal stuff - deleted Trash, looked for duplicates, etc. But in adding up all of the stuff in the directories, couldn't find where all of the space was being used.
Searched the forums and tried things like turning Time Machine off. Disabling local Time Machine Snap Shots. But still couldn't find out what was going on. I could select "Get Info" on the internal hard drive, and watch the space disappear without doing anything.
Finally figured out what was going on this evening. I had been looking in my home directory, and found that it had over 200GB of stuff, even though when I added up the sizes of each subfolder, I got nowhere close to 200GB. So I next made the hidden folders visible (Terminal command: chflags nohidden ~/Library/) and then looked further. The culprit was the Mail folder. And within that folder was a Yahoo recovered mail folder that had almost 200GB of stuff in it. Deleted that folder (also deleted the Yahoo account from Mail preferences which means I will need to access Yahoo Mail through the web instead of Mail).
That fixed it!
I hope this helps others that are loosing disk space for no apparent reason.

Spotlight was changed for Lion; changed so much that Lion must create a new index for every disk/partition on your system. Worse, until it's done, Time Machine backups will run at a crawl, or worse, because the backups also need to be indexed again, but seem to get a lower priority than other drives.
See if the other indexing has completed -- if there's a tiny dot in the Spotlight icon at the right of your menubar, click it and see what it's indexing. Until that's done, your backups will be very slow, if they move at all. You may be better off to cancel the backup and turn Time Machine OFF until everything else is done.
The first backup will still take a long time, as the TM drive still has to be indexed.

Disappearing disk space--do I have a virus??

My disk space seems to be disappearing like crazy.... I have a 100GB unformatted (93.04 GB formatted according to Finder) system HDD, and I examined the size of every subfolder in "Macintosh HD" and came up with this:
Users: 17.39 GB
Applications: 3.66 GB
System: 1.66 GB
Library: 5.82 GB
System Folder: 156.5 MB
Applications (Mac OS 9): 170.2 MB
Backups: 903 MB
=About 30 GB (not that it makes that much difference, but assuming 1000 MB=1 GB).
There is NO WAY that even comes close to 93 GB. Even accounting for slack space, that doesn't make sense. (I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of HFS+). And to my knowledge this system has no hidden partitions on it. My trash is also completely empty, yet Finder tells me I have ZERO KB of space. Any thoughts what could account for all that missing space and how I might go about recovering it???

You don't have a virus. Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Are you using File Vault?
 Cheers, Tom

Disk Space Disappearing -- 10.2.8

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