Getting Startup Disk Full message since downloading new Safari update
I downloaded the new Safari update a few days ago… it took ages to do and whenever I now try to use Safari I get the Pinwheel of Death after about two minutes and then a message telling me my startup disk is full. It won't let me acknowledge the message or force-quit from Safari – I have to switch off at the button and restart.
All I have on my MacBook are 15 Word documents and the Applications it shipped with (in fact I’ve actually dumped some in an attempt to clear space, as ell as dumping the cache folders)… I only use it to surf the net in the evenings and have no music or pictures on it.
I'm not having this problem at all when using Firefox. Is it possible the update has a bug?
You really need a bit more space than that, but try a bit of maintanance:
Repairing permissions is important, and should always be carried out both before and after any software installation or update.
Go to Disk Utility (this is in your Utilities Folder in your Application folder) and click on the icon of your hard disk (not the one with all the numbers).
In First Aid, click on Repair Permissions.
This only takes a minute or two in Tiger, but much longer in Leopard.
Background information here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751
and here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672
An article on troubleshooting Permissions can be found here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963
By the way, you can ignore any messages about SUID or ACL file permissions, as explained here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US
If you were having any serious problems with your Mac you might as well complete the exercise by repairing your hard disk as well. You cannot do this from the same start-up disk. Reboot from your install disk (holding down the C key). Once it opens, select your language, and then go to Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Select your hard disk as before and click Repair.
Once that is complete reboot again from your usual start-up disk.
Similar Messages
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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. -
Keep getting startup disk full messages but I have plenty of HD space
Hi all,
I've been experiencing a odd problem on my 18 month old 13" MacBook Pro. As of last week, I keep getting the dreaded "Your startup disk is almost full" and "Your startup disk is full" messages, yet I have over 7GB of hard drive space available (in addition to 8GB of installed ram) seemingly at random times. I noticed this message come up immediately after a restart this morning, as well as when I woke from display sleep earlier today, but most of the day the messages pop up (sometimes it's "almost full", sometimes it's "full") every 30-60 mins or so. I then immediately check my available space and it reads a solid 7GBs.
Any idea what's going on, or how I can fix this? I'd like to fully understand why this is happening so I can prevent it from coming up in the future.
Thanks!
Addendum: Ok, did a few restarts and it's confirmed: I get the "Your startup disk is full" message when my login screen appers, every time. Help!Mike Amin wrote:
1. Since when have Mac users needed to adhere to the "10% rule"?
Since hard disk's where built into computers regardless of Mac or others.
10% is just a arbitrary value in a configuration file: Warn at x% - for at least three reasons:
If a disk run full the system is not longer able to extend logfiles, configuration files, the Mac's equivalent for /proc or the swap space.
This will cause the system to freeze and/or prevent the next boot.
On shutdown the system could not write out the data buffered in memory to the disk.
Thereby data may be lost or the filesystem corrupted as a result.
Imagine your 7GB free and the system tríes on shutdown to write back 9GB RAM buffer ...**Do'h**
For user safety. Imagine you have only 5GB free and you load a 7.5GB RAW image file into a application. **Do'h**
Mike Amin wrote:
4. Lupunus, you mention that "available space" is different than "true space". Can you elaborate?
The displayed "Available Space" did not include the cached/buffered files, as to display that value the "sync" command get not invoked.
The kernel keeps data in memory to avoid doing (relatively slow) diskreads and writes.
sync writes any data buffered in memory out to disk.
Lupunus -
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.
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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 -
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... -
Why do I get startup disk full error even though I have 2 gb free?
My startup disk is getting full (I get error message) after 1 day of usage.
In the finder, after a restart, it says I have 2.05 GB available.
Then after working for a while (yes, I keep a few apps open - usually Entourage, Word, Firefox, iTunes -- but c'mon, I have 1 GB of RAM) I get an error that my startup disk is full.
This is my Terminal Log after getting the error:
Processes: 68 total, 2 running, 66 sleeping... 241 threads 16:52:11
Load Avg: 0.92, 0.79, 0.71 CPU usage: 40.4% user, 8.4% sys, 51.1% idle
SharedLibs: num = 204, resident = 38.2M code, 5.36M data, 10.5M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 11633, resident = 436M + 11.8M private, 161M shared
PhysMem: 237M wired, 448M active, 268M inactive, 954M used, 69.9M free
VM: 11.3G + 138M 409448(1) pageins, 267438(0) pageouts
This is my Terminal Log after startup:
Processes: 59 total, 2 running, 57 sleeping... 165 threads 17:00:14
Load Avg: 0.31, 0.11, 0.04 CPU usage: 0.0% user, 2.8% sys, 97.2% idle
SharedLibs: num = 143, resident = 25.7M code, 4.27M data, 7.07M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 4731, resident = 56.3M + 13.4M private, 81.0M shared
PhysMem: 174M wired, 110M active, 139M inactive, 424M used, 599M free
VM: 6.67G + 104M 21081(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts
Any suggestions?That isn't much hard drive space open. I have heard 10% should be free, so if you have an 80 GB drive you need 8 GB free; if you have 100, 10 free and so on. Even if the figure is 5% you are still too low.
Your error message said you had 267438 pageouts to the disk which seems huge. That means your physical RAM can't keep up and is sending out data to the hard disk which is virtual memory, not real RAM memory. I don't know enough about it to say for sure but that seems like a recipe for this kind of trouble. -
I keep getting a message that my startup disk is full and I need to quit applications or delete files. This happens even when only 1 app is running. I'm using mail or firefox, nothing too complicated. There is 4G left on my hard drive. What do I do? I just upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5. I thought that might help, but it hasn't. If anything, it is a bit worse.
There is 4G left on my hard drive.
Free up drive space ASAP before it gets to the point where your Mac wont boot.
Freeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac Guides -
"startup disk full" message-recommend 'cleaning' software please?
What's the safest way to 'clean' my MacBookPro - to make room for startup disk... I've heard terrible things about MacKeeper. Your recommendations please!
Running maintenance tasks and freeing up disk space are two different things.
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you have a minimum of 15% free disk space.
Avoid MacKeeper.
Let your Mac do maintenance for you. No third party utillty apps required.
Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks
As for making more space available, help here > Freeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac Guides -
Error Message Since Downloading New Theme
I download a new theme for Halloween from the App World ever since then when I do a hard reset and log in using my password it gives me this error. " uncaughtexceptionnet.rim,device.api.system.controlled.access.exception ". Does anyone know what this means? I hope its just the them and not something hazardous I love my phone to death. I have been through aloth of phones and this by far is my favorite. Some please help.
Hiya!
You might want to check this article out.
http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/KB13934
Hope that helps
1). Please thank those who help you by clicking the beside the 'Reply' button.
2). If your issue has been solved, please resolve it by marking "Accept as Solution" on the correct post!
3). Remember to have fun! We are all in this together!
4). Follow me on -
I use AOL mail and saw a banner for a supported firefox download and I made the mistake of downloading the update. Since I have none of my saved passwords and I do not get a prompt when I enter a site for the choice to save the password. I am looking to change to Google Chrome if this cannot get corrected.
I encountered precisely this problem after the first upgrade to iOS 8, also on a 5s: empty Recents lists, failure to log any calls and a badge showing a -1 (minus 1). It appears to be a problem with corruption of the iPhone backup file, whether backed up to the computer or to iCloud (I tried both). Whether it was introduced by the iOS 8 upgrade process is open to speculation as I'd had no problems with restoring from backup with a couple of prior iOS 7 updates.
Restoring the iPhone to Factory settings solves the problem, but then restoring from a backup re-introduces it. Setting the device up as a new phone is the only way to fix it. Problem is, you lose your contacts and SMS history, unless you've used a third-party app to back them up outside iTunes. If that's no problem, simply do a Factory Restore then set up the phone as new and the problem is gone.
If it is a problem (it was for me), I found two apps that enable you to back up & subsequently restore Contacts & Messages. Syncios is free and worked like a charm for getting my Contacts backed up & restored to the phone. However, it can only back up & restore Messages if the device is jailbroken.
This phone was not JB'd so I had to find another app for Messages: Backuptrans iPhone SMS Backup and Restore. It is $19 for up to 3 devices but was worth it in my case; creates a backup file on your computer that you can restore from after the Factory Restore. Very simple & straightforward.
The photos, apps & music, etc., were easily restored to the phone via iTunes sync.
Hope this is of help to others similarly affected. Must be relatively rare, though, as even the Senior Apple Advisors I worked with had not encountered it before. I made them aware of this thread, FWIW. -
The new update is killing my phone faster than before. Is there a way to fix this problem? I have shut off my location setting and lowered the brightness and shut wifi off when not at home.
Hello, Btchy.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
Battery life can be difficult to troubleshoot as multiple factors contribute to how long a charge can last. Graphic intensive applications, display brightness and data connectivity are just a few of the items that can cause the battery life to decrease rapidly. I would need to know a little more information about your usage patterns and device type to give you and idea on how to maximize battery life. However, here are some additional tips on how to adjust settings that may help.
Charge your iPhone and iPod touch
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1476
About Batteries
Maximizing Battery Life
Cheers,
Jason H -
What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error?
What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error? I can't update software or use my MacAir at all.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
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.
To locate large files, you can use Spotlight. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
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.
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 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 not to screw up. 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. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the 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. -
Startup disk full on new Macbook Pro
I bought a Late 2013 13 inch 8 gb Macbook Pro to replace a mid 2010 that had hung up during an update and seized up. I migrated a backup of the 2010 to the 2013 and immediately began getting "startup disk full" notices. I mainly use it for pictures and music and very little document type stuff. I have emptied the trash and repaired permissions and emptied email and downloads etc. I can't figure out what is taking up my space. Storage looks like this, 16.94 free of 250.14. Other storage 166 gb, Apps 37 gb, Photos 14 gb, Movies 5 gb, Audio 10 gb. Any suggestions?
Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located. -
Startup disk full error - boots normally but won't start finder
I'm having a problem in which my iMac when it boots gives me an error that the startup disk is full, but other than that it can boot normally and allow me to log in, but after that the startup stalls. I never get past the default "outer space" desktop image and finder never starts, so there's no icons, no dock, and nothing on the menu bar. What's weird is that Safari and Mail start and I can see them because I believe I have them starting automatically at boot. Safari works (I'm using it now to enter this discussion). Mail on the other hand starts but is hung checking for the servers for incoming mail.
I've tried to boot in safe mode (holding down Shift key at startup), but it doesn't work.
I've tried to boot in single user mode (holding down cmd-S at startup), but it doesn't work either.
I've tried to boot from Snow Leopard installation media (holding down C at startup), but it doesn't work as well.
Each time I try one of these alternate boot methods, it just takes me to the normal login screen with the startup disk full message. I click OK, login, and get stuck.
I'm just trying to get the finder started so that I can delete some files, but I just can't get that far. It's strange that the browser works perfectly and internet connection is fine, but nothing else works.
Thoughts? Thanks. - MikeHi Lina, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Safe Mode might allow you to boot and free up some space.
If you have access to another Mac and a FireWire cable, another option would be to use FireWire Target Disk Mode to transfer data to the other Mac and delete it on your MBA.
If either way works, you want to open up somewhere around 15% free space. Once you do that, run Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insert disc>restart>immediately hold down c key and keep holding it until you see “Preparing Installation”)>at first screen select the language and click Continue> click on the Utilities Menu in the menu bar>open Disk Utility>select your HD in the panel on the left side>click Repair Disk at bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until it says “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need a stronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyond repair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repair utilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself).
Ultimately, though, it sounds like you need a larger HD . . . .
Maybe you are looking for
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