Do I need to leave a minimum amount of free space?

Hello,
I have the 8g iPhone, recently added data to it, which leaves approximately 375 megs of free space. Should this relatively small amount of free space cause any issues? I read a few posts about it but the answers listed in those was relatively inconclusive. I'm thinking about the 10% rule (or myth) about free space on HD's below that amount start to suffer performance issues, etc.
Thanks
Message was edited by: Azeroth

Right, I've only heard suggestions or assumptions so far. I guess it would seem strange to me that Apple would allow you to fill potential space that would impact the device performance, why not just set it aside. If this were true, wouldn't it mean you could only use just over 6gigs on an 8gig iPod without some sort of consequence (i.e. Start with 8G, down to 7.2g for the OS, down another 10% to avoid performance problems, would leave you at just over 6gigs right?)
I guess I thought if this were true, Apple would say something or do something to prevent it or warn users of potential consequences.
Message was edited by: Azeroth

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Minimum amount of free space on phone?

Just out of curiousity, is there a minimum amount that has to be kept free to ensure smooth running, or could you use up every last kb if you wanted? I would like to think it wouldn't be much, since the "8gb" is already down to 7.27 before you even start!

With a Mac and OS X, there are several rules of thumb floating around with the most common being keep no less than 10% free. Someone I know who writes OS X troubleshooting books says you should never have less than 5GB free on a Mac which provides for having enough free space to perform an Archive & Install if needed which doesn't apply to the iPhone.
10% free on the iPhone would be around 800MB or more like just over 700MB. I've used my iPhone with no problems at 400MB or so free so I usually try to split the difference and keep my free space in the 500MB or so free with no problems.
I would like to think it wouldn't be much, since the "8gb" is already down to 7.27 before you even start!
This is the same for all drives which advertise the decimal equivalent which isn't the actual with the actual being slightly less and OS X alone on the iPhone takes up around 500MB or so.

Finder showing incorrect amount of free space

After the recent Mountain Lion update, my Finder now shows an incorrect amount of free space.
I have a 500GB hard drive, and I have about 150GB free.
After the update, finder says I have 478.4 GB free?
That looks like the total capacity, after you account for system software. I've done a PRAM and SCM reset, disk verification and repair, but still no joy.
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Here is the answer....
zchrykng
Re: Hard drive available space shown incorrectly in finder Jan 12, 2012 7:35 PM (in response to ilari Korte)
This is probably like the issue that I was having on my MacBook Pro. If you are using Time Machine on a laptop it stores the diffs in a file on your hard drive. This action can be disabled with the terminal command
sudo tmutil disablelocal
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To know the amount of free space in a tablespace

hi,
I'm learning oracle 9i release 9.2.0.1.0 .I'd created a tablespace 'TOOLS' for being used as the default tablespace for Statspack.
I wish to know the amount of free space available in this tablespace. For this purpose I ran the following query but there was no rows selected :-
SQL> select tablespace_name,bytes from dba_free_space
2 where tablespace_name='TOOLS';
no rows selected
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NAME
CWMLITE
DRSYS
EXAMPLE
INDX
ODM
SYSTEM
TOOLS
UNDOTBS1
USERS
XDB
TEMP
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I tried your query
SQL> select TABLESPACE_NAME,
2 sum(BYTES) Total_free_space,
3 max(BYTES) largest_free_extent
4 from dba_free_space
5 group by TABLESPACE_NAME;
♀TABLESPACE_NAME TOTAL_FREE_SPACE LARGEST_FREE_EXTENT
CWMLITE 11141120 10878976
DRSYS 10813440 10813440
EXAMPLE 131072 131072
INDX 26148864 26148864
ODM 11206656 11206656
SYSTEM 3211264 3080192
UNDOTBS1 199229440 196149248
USERS 26083328 26083328
XDB 196608 196608
9 rows selected.
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Hi!
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Just found the solution in another thread: the "problem" seems to be the local Time Machine Snapshots. Finder ignores them, Disk Utility doesn't.

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Finder is reporting the wrong amount of free space on all my drives. It's not from time machine local backups, because I've disabled those. In fact, it's reporting MORE free space than there should be! In all cases, Disk Utility shows the correct amount. (So does the Terminal command df.)
eg:
external 120GB hard drive (USB) - finder says 137.83GB free (more than the drive can hold, nice) - disk util says 70 used 49.9 free... better
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Erratic amount of free space on my hard drive...

Can someone please tell me if they think this is strange, or should I not worry about it.
About a week ago I had 520 gigs of free space on my hard drive (its a 1 TB drive). I decided to defrag it simply because it had been a long time since I had done so. That went off without a hitch. I did not even think to check if the amount of free space had changed afterwards. I then decided to use Disk Utility to 'Erase Free Space'. That ran fine, but afterwards I was shocked to see that I now had 605 gigs (!!!) of free space, meaning either the defrag or the erasing of 'Free Space' freed up some 85 gigs (). Okay, strange I thought, but no complaints here. A couple days went by and I happened to glance at the free space and WOAH, its dropped back down to 570, even though I've added, AT MOST, 5 gigs of photos, music etc. Is it me or does this seem really strange...? Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this, reasoning etc...
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Adam

Hi A,
The used and free space amount are subject to some considerations as use and approach to data storage, here is a link to a previous question about it with reference to two other related posts http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12743931#12743931
It is also curious that when you create and save a data file it will report a different size once you open and save it again even without changing contents.
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How can I get the amount of free space that is on my drive to show at the bottom of the drive in Lion.

How can I get the amount of free space that is on my drive to show at the bottom of the drive in Lion.
This is a must feature for me and I may have to go back to Snow Leopard.
Please help!

Right click on your desktop and choose "viewer options". Adjust the spacing and the size of your icons and you should be able to see the size of your drive(s) and the free space available on each drive with the exception of your bootcamp drive which will only show the overall size of the drive you have it on. This may be different if you only have one system drive (like on a Mac Book Pro) with a partition containing bootcamp on it. this may only show you the overall capacity, I can't say for sure though as I only use a Mac Pro with 4 seperate Hard Drives which are showing both overall capacity and free space available. Hope this helps
Denisimo

"How do I defrag my mac?" "You don't need to, it does it itself" Fragmented Free Space: 99%. READ THIS NOW

Just a heads up for my fellow Mac users.
"How do I defrag my mac?"
"You don't need to, ever. It does it automatically."
"But it's running really slowly..."
"Repair permissions or something. Defragging is not necessary on a mac."
Techtool pro is now defragmenting my mac. Looks like the job's going to take about 4 hours. I thought I'd give everyone the truth about this while waiting (on a different computer obviously)
The truth is, Apple's defragmenting system ***** BALLS. It has two massive, massive flaws which I feel people urgently need to be made aware of.
#1: It only defragments files up to 20mb. If you're a movie producer, a songwriter, a photographer, or anything which involves working with many massive files, the built in defragmenting program WILL NOT HELP YOU IN THE SLIGHTEST.
#2: It only defragments FILES. Free space is ignored, which eventually causes absolutely hrrendous problems.
Let me give you an analogy here. Imagine your mac's hard drive is a bookcase with lots of books on it.
File fragmentation is when it can't find a gap in the bookcase big enough for the entire book, so it breaks the book into pieces and srotes them in different gaps.
Space fragmentation is when there are gaps all over the bookcase, instead of all the books being pushed to one side so there's a long gap elsewhere.
Apple's built in defragmenting program will only fix the first problem - and even then, it will ignore any book bigger than 20 pages long, if you have bigger books which are broken up, you're screwed.
Why is space fragmentation a problem? It's a problem because it directly LEADS TO file fragmentation. If there is a large block of free space all in one part of the disk, then an entire file can be written to it. However, if there is no single free block big enough for the file, it HAS NO CHOICE but to fragment it.
So basically you might have 5 GB free and want to save a 2GB imovie project. That's cool. But what you may not realize is, the biggest single area of free space is only say 600MB. Others are around 300 and 400. Therefore the file MUST be fragmented into all these different areas, which wouldn't be necessary if all the free space was in one area of the disk.
But apple's built in tools don't do anything about this, at least not in Tiger. PErhaps this has been fixed in later installations but I'm almost certain the same issues exist in leopard.
Your only option is to buy a defragmenting program. I know this ***** but believe me, this IS something you NEED to do if your activity on your laptop involves disk space - intensive projects. I'm using TechTool Pro which has been recommended to me as hands down the best. It has a number of other functions as well, right now I'm only using the defragmenting tools but it has others for repairing damages disk sectors and other mantainence tools. There are other programs such as iDefrag out there as well.
Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you because I experienced mind numbing frustration trying to get answers from the Apple community. Google it or ask the question yourself and you will most likely be whacked in the face with the intro to my post here - "You don't need to, it's not necessary, macs do it themselves, blah blah blah"
Even worse, Apple's own webpage on the subject is nothing short of a disaster. It basically says "You PROBABLY don't need to defragment, unless you work with large files." That's it. You'd expect it to have an extra section saying "If you DO happen to work with large files, here's what you do" but no such section exists. It basically says "You don't need to defrag most of the time, and on the rare occasions when you do, well, too bad, you're screwed."
I urge everyone to heed this or they will be tearing their hair out at how slow their mac has become and the fact that no one will offer any meaningful advice other than the standard, generic, "Repair permissions" - the Mac equivelant of "have you tried turning it off and on again".
My disk is at 99% fragmented free space. NINTEY NINE PERCENT. In other words, although I have 25GB of free space, there was not a single contiguous block on the entire machine. I had almost 5,000 fragmented files as well, mostly imovies. Defragmenting got this down to about 300.
The defrag job is taking more than 4 hours and will probably go on to take a lot longer than that. This machine has been slowly grinding to a halt over the last 3 years and now I know why.
Please don't listen to anyone. Get yourself a defragmenting folder, and email Apple to tell them it's just not good enough to give their customers half assed answers and inadequate basic maintainence tools. Mac OS X must literally be the only operating system out there where something as basic as defragmenting is not only almost impossible to get answers on, but actually costs money to fix once you DO get answers.
As customers, we should not accept this any longer. I intend to spread the above message far and wide.
I LOVE Apple. I've always been "a mac" and I always will be. This in no way a mac bashing post or a windows endorsing one. I wouldn't switch back to windows if you gave me a million euro.
But sometimes even the best developers can royally f*ck up. This is one of them.
There is no readon people should be forced to put up with this crap. Absolutely no reason at all. I've had 3 months of crappy performance with no official explanation whatsoever.
Apple if you're reading this: I love your products. I'm a loyal customer. People are more forgiving than you think, speak up, admit you dropped the ball, and DO something about it in your next updates to Lion and whichever versions of Leopard you are still actively maintaining.
There's no shame in admitting when you're wrong. The shame is in hiding behind false promises and walls of silence.
--Loyal customer, but feeling rather betrayed by all this.

The old rule of thumb was to keep 10-12 GB free. Any lower than that and you will start to have trouble. I was very close to that for a long time and never had any complaints. Now, Lion "encourages" 20% free space (on my newer 250 GB drive) so I try to keep it with more than 50 GB free.
Do you still have the original memory in that machine too? The metal plate you have to remove in the battery compartment also provides access to the RAM. Your machine will take 2 GB of RAM, possibly 3. You definitely want to max that out too.
Regardless, you definitely need a new hard drive. When Apple switched to PC components, they had to take a quality hit. These 2.5" notebook hard drives are not very reliable. I'm surprised your hard drive hasn't died by now. I usually get a new hard drive with every major OS upgrade. A $ 50 investment every couple of years is no big deal.
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So, you must get a new hard drive because your old one is likely on death's door. If you don't have at least 2 GB - get it. If you can't afford a new machine, you might want to consider an SSD. That might help mitigate your RAM limitations. You can spend from $ 100 to $ 350 and get a dramatic speed improvement.

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http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

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Cheers in Advance

Cheers, this helped alot. It turned out it was the snapshots that time machine takes and saves on the internal Macintosh HD. which then the snapshots show as free space.
Cheers again
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Do I need to leave a minimum amount of free space?

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