Hard Drive Filling.

I know i have read others like this, but no 2 seemed alike, so I figured i just needed to post and get some input. My hard drive started filling at an alarming rate tonight. I have not installed any new software in the past couple of days, and also did not get the recent security update (I have it now). I checked with whatsize, and found nearly 10gb of logs. If anyone can tell me whats going on i'd apperciate it. Spam Follows:
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextFillRects: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextSetCompositeOperation: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextSetAllowsDithering: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextRestoreGState: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: kCGErrorInvalidConnection : CGSDeviceCreate: Invalid connection
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: Failed to create window context device
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGWindowContextCreate: failed to create software delegate.
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: kCGErrorInvalidConnection : CGSDeviceCreate: Invalid connection
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: Failed to create window context device
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGWindowContextCreate: failed to create software delegate.
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextResetClip: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextReplaceTopGState: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextSetPatternPhase: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: kCGErrorInvalidConnection : CGSDeviceCreate: Invalid connection
Aug 11 00:53:16 Caryave /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.app/Contents/MacOS/UserNoti ficationCenter: Failed to create window context device
Now i went in and killed UserNotificationCenter.app and it seems to have stopped for the moment. Any insight will be much help.
Thanks!
Jasn
12" PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1.5Ghz G4/1.25GB RAM

Do you by any chance have something like the VersionTracker pro or intermediate account activated? If you have a .Mac account I know you can sign up and get automatic notifications of software updates, and it looks like that is what is broken. I can't think what else would be using the UserNotificationCenter. I'll bet whatever the process is (such as VersionTracker notify), put something in your /Library/Startup items that runs automatically to launch the checking process and activate the notification function, but something in the chain of actions isn't working right and is sending an endless stream of malfunction messages to the log.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Similar Messages

Hard Drive Filling Up On It's Own, Even After I Delete Files

Okay so I have a macbook pro version 10.6.8. and I don't really know much about computers, so if you can help me and take it slow that would be greatly appreciated! I don't know anything about logs, but by reading some of the other questions, it seems like there might be a problem with those? My computer was running fine until the other day I deleted about 2,000 images (I'm a photographer) off of my computer and on to an external hard drive . When I deleted them, my storage suddenly went from about 186 GB to 15 GB and ever since I have been getting a message saying that my start up disk is full or almost full. I deleted about 6 GB of songs from my itunes this morning (and emptied the trash can) and it said I had about 8 GB free and then an hour later I was back to about 300 MB. I don't want to keep deleting things if it is just going to keep filling back up but I'm not really sure what to do. The computer as a whole has also been running really slow but I just assumed that was because I had so much stored on the drive? Please help!Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I went through finder trying to find any big files and one of my email accounts was taking up 231 GB of recovered mail. I deleted all of them and so far so good, but how do I stop this from happening again? It seems to be saving the exact same email once about every five minutes and it had been for months.

Try using GrandPerspective to see what's taking up all the space.
Also, make sure everything you don't need is turned off under Sharing; it's possible that you left file sharing on without a password and someone is taking advantage of that.
If you have a MobileMe account, do you have iDisk Syncing turned on? Or something similar if you have Dropbox or another similar service?

Hard Drive and External Hard drive filled up instantly?

While using my Mac today, I came up with a dialogue box saying my hard drive (and external hard drive) are both full. This is strange because this morning I had over 30GB on my internal hard drive, and between 100GB and 300GB on my external hard drive.
How can both of these fill up at once?
I had uploaded approximately 100 photos to my external hard drive this morning, but there was still plenty room then.
What is going on?

HI Matt,
Get Disk Inventory so you can see exact sizes of files and folders.
*"I came up with a dialogue box saying my hard drive (and external hard drive) are both full. This is strange because this morning I had over 30GB on my internal hard drive, and between 100GB and 300GB on my external hard drive."*
Not sure what's going on but it would be a good time to boot from your install disk and check the hard drive.
Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger and later) and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
*(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel. It should say: Verified)*
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
When you are finished with DU, from the Menu Bar, select Utilities/Startup Manager.
Select your start up disk and click Restart
Carolyn

Hard drive filled up after I did back up using Superduper

I bought a new Macbook Air. I was going to back up my old Macbook Air data onto an external drive before I set up the new Macbook Air. Also my old Macbook Air (1.86 GHz, 120GB HDD) had a broken hinge and I was going to take it to the Apple A/S center to have the hinge repaired. So I wanted to back up my data just in case.
I have backed up the data from the old Macbook Air using the same external drive twice before using Superduper and it seemed to go fine both occasions. I have OS 10.6.0 on the old Macbook Air.
I am typing this on the new Macbook Air by the way (2.16GHz, 256 GB, 4GB memory).
I use the unregistered version of the Superduper that requires you to erase and then do a full backup.
I plugged in the external drive using a powered USB hub. (On previous occasions I have used a USB cord that plugs into two computers, as one computer doesn't provide enough power; this time I forgot to set up the second computer and just plugged it into the hub. The blue light came up on the external drive when I plugged it in.)
It came up with "Untitled", an orange icon, on the Superduper window. It asked me whether I want to copy Macintosh HD to "Untitled". I pressed "OK".
It started copying.
Then I was doing something nearby the computer and accidentally tugged on the lid of the Macbook Air. The hinge is broken and as soon as I touched the Macbook Air lid, the lid laid flat on the table, with the laptop completely open. It does that occasionally because the hinge is broken and the slightest pressure on the lid means it will spring right open (180 degrees).
I checked the Superduper window and it seemed to be copying OK. The number of files copied was going up and up.
However I got a message that said that I hadn't ejected the disk properly and that could damage the disk.
I assumed that meant the external drive "Untitled". I thought I should end the copying and start again.
So I quit Superduper. Something strange happened after that. I can't remember what it was exactly. I think it didn't want to quit. I had to use Force Quit.
I then unplugged and plugged the external drive back into the hub. I opened Superduper. This time it had "Untitled 2".
I thought that was strange, and I restarted the computer hoping to see "Untitled" in the Superduper after restarting the computer and opening Superduper again.
However, I got "Untitled 2" again even though the icon of the external hard drive was labeled "Untitled" on my Desktop.
(I think this is where I went wrong.)
I pressed copy again. About halfway through it suddenly stopped and said that the copying had failed.
I unplugged the external hard drive and plugged it in again, and restarted the computer. I opened Superduper again and this time I could not get it to copy. The copy part was grayed out.
I opened Disk Utility and checked the "Untitled" disk. It said it was fine. Verify was OK.
But when I checked the Macintosh HD I got all these error messages and the volume was full. 105GB was used up and 0 GB was available.
Very strange as I had about 20GB available before I tried to do the backup. (I checked the disk capacity of the HD before I did the backup.) I knew for sure that my hard drive was not full before I did the backup.
I tried to repair it but it didn't work. It told me to restart using the operating disk and use First Aid.
I put in the Snow Leopard operating disk in the Superdrive and restarted the computer holding down "C".
The operating disk came up, I chose English and chose Disk Utility. I tried repair. It gave messages that the Library Core had been changed. It said the disk was repaired and OK now. However, the volume was still 105 GB with about 12MB available (before I did the Disk Utility using the OS disc, I deleted a few music files.)
I just restarted the computer after having removed the Superdrive from the computer and it took like twenty minutes to restart. It has restarted though finally (while I am typing this).
I don't know what to do. I don't know what I did to corrupt the disk. I do not want to make things worse. So far the Desktop looks unchanged.
I can't do anything because it seems the computer's hard drive is full eg. browse the internet properly – it keeps coming up with error messages about Preferences being changed.
I think the disk got full because I inadvertently was backing up onto the computer's hard drive (the 'Untitled 2' was probably somewhere on the hard drive of the computer, and not the external hard drive.
I am worried that I have wrecked the back up drive and I have ruined the MBA's hard drive.
What should I do?
Should I just delete some files including program files and free up some space at least 2 GB? I can delete heavy duty program files like Adobe Creative Suite from Applications. (I have the disks so I can always reinstall them again.) What about deleting MS Office? (I have the disk for that.) Will doing that affect the Photoshop files and the Word files I already have?
What do you recommend I delete so that I can free up lots of space?
And how do I find what is filling up my laptop and why there is almost zero GB left on my hard drive. If I did do a backup onto the hard drive where do I find this and how can I delete it?
I was planning to do the backup and on the new MBA do a migration of everything on the backup using the Superdrive – a clone. I have done this before (when I bought the old MBA) and it worked (I did clean install a few times when I mucked up the hard drive in the past and restored the clone that was on the backup external drive onto the computer).
How can I tell if the external drive that I tried backing up onto is OK?
I thought I would check here before I did anything in case I made things worse.
I am going to use the latest operating system on the new Macbook Air. I have read here that 10.6.0 is risky – all your data can suddenly be erased.
I will also update the old Macbook Air to 10.6.4 once I have got things fixed on it.
Thanks for any advice.

There may be one or more large folders in your /Volumes folder that shouldn't be there and are using up your disk space.
/Volumes is an 'invisible" folder at the root level of your internal drive which is supposed to contain only the "mount points" for your attached disk volumes, but sometimes an actual folder can mistakenly get created there, often as a result of a failed copy operation such as you experienced with SuperDuper. Such a "ghost" folder will have a name similar to a real external drive, and can contain data that was meant for the real external drive but never got there. When the real external volume then re-mounts, it can no longer use its own name for the mount point in /Volumes because that name is already "taken", and so an extra number gets appended to the mount point. This may have happened twice in your situation, since the actual drive is now mounting as "Untitled 2".
/Volumes is a hidden folder, but it's easy to peek into it. First you should *eject and then physically disconnect all external drives*. Then:
Finder>Go menu> Go to Folder
enter /Volumes and click Go
You should see an alias to the startup volume. Don't touch this, or any other aliases. Do you also see a large folder named "Untitled, and perhaps another folder named "Untitled 1," which are not aliases? If so, delete them, and restart.

Mac Hard Drive Filling Up

Hi,
I noticed while trying to install software with BootCamp that I did not have enough space, when I had recenly taken 50 gigabytes of misc. files off of my hard drive. I went to "Get Info" on my Mac HD and noticed it filling up before my eyes. So, after using Disk Inventory X, I realized that the troublesome file was not yet large enough to see (And not filling up fast enough), so I took it to the Genius Bar. The reinstalled the software after doing a diagnosis on the disk image only to find a "Software Warning," and ended up having to give me a new Hard Drive under warranty. (I actually got a larger HD for free. Woohoo! (Different story)) Anyway, after restoring my computer with a recent BootCamp backup, the problem still persists, so it is obviouly an application or something that I had before. I am wondering if there is a way that I can see exactly what is causing this problem?
Thanks,
Jake

Hi Jake,
Likely a failing App or service...
Open Console in Applications>Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.
Or...
One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...
PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive
Reboot, test again.
If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or some USB or Firewire device, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts (Users & Groups in later OSX versions)>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed. Or an errant process eating up RAM.
Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.
Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...
/private/var/run/StartupItems
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchDaemons

Hard Drive filled with "Other"

Of the 250 Gb on my hard drive, 132 Gb is filled with something that "About this Mac" calls "other"?
Any idea what it is and how to get rid of it?

Other is everything that is not movies, photos, backup, apps.....Some of the other may not be required by you or the system but most of it is.

Itunes problem with hard drive filling up?

Recently, I plugged my 8gb Nano into my computer and as soon as I looked at my library, many songs had exclamation points and no longer would play on my ipod. For a few of the songs with the !, I just deleted them, and went and dragged and dropped it again form my computer's hard drive, and it synced/played with no problem??? I have probably 200 or so songs with the !, so I was looking for a more efficient way to fix the problem other than deleting each one individually and dragging and dropping them again from the hard drive of my computer. Thanks in advance!
Also, I have a second problem. When I plug in my nano to my computer, my ipod's hard drive begins to immediatley fill up for no reason, and I'm not adding any files to Itunes. I then looked at my ipod under windows as an external drive and under the "music" folder it is adding folders with artist's names as the titles of these folders within the "music" folder of the ipod when I open it in windows? Anyone ever had this problem??

plausibly, you're getting some less-standard symptoms of a Windows drive letter confusion here. if that's what is afoot, the following document may be of some assistance:
Windows confuses iPod with network drive or hard drive and may keep iPod from mounting or songs may seem to disappear

Canvio backup hard drive filled?

I have a Toshiba Canvio portable hard (500GB)drive for backup. My computer has 75GB of information on it but my hard drive is nearly filled. How can this be? Do I have some setting incorrect? thanks

Try re-indexing Spotlight.
Spotlight – Re-index

Hard Drive filling up: SubmitDiagInfo, /private/var & log issues

This topic is part question, part help for people I've seen having a similar problem in other threads. My issue is different enough from the other issues, that I wanted to post it as a separate topic.
I've had about 24GB of available space for weeks now. I haven't downloaded any large files recently, nor created any myself.
Suddenly I noticed the hard drive space decreasing. I went from 24GB, to 19GB, to 10GB, then 8, 5, 1.5... next thing I knew, it said I had 260MB available. This was within maybe two days, with a big ramp-down within a couple of hours this morning, while I was on a train, and not even connected to a network.
I started getting error messages saying my hard drive was full; then, I got errors saying I didn't have enough application memory, and applications were being paused, and I would have to force quit them. Within about 5 minutes, I dropped from 1.5GB to 260MB.
Thinking back, the last week or so, I remembered that sometimes when I came into my office in the morning, my Mac would be awake (I usually sleep it at the end of the day, and an error message would be displayed saying SubmitDiagInfo had crashed. I thought this might have something to do with it.
I did some detective work in these forums. I checked Activity Monitor and the Console. Sure enough, SubmitDiagInfo was taking up a bunch of CPU time.
The Console revealed I had a lot of Diagnostic Logs. I tried deleting them with the Console's Clear button, but it didn't seem to do anything. I checked with OmniDiskSweep, and sure enough, I had over 20GB of log files.
At this point, my hard drive was so full, I had to force quit OmniDiskSweep. I used the Go To Folder command and entered /private/var/log - The Diagnostic Logs folder was nearly 20GB. I deleted it and emptied the trash immediately.
I looked at the /private/var/vm folder and noticed it was also very large (10GB), but I had read elsewhere not to mess with this folder.
From the console, I quit SubmitDiagInfo.
I check my hard drive, and I'm suddenly back to 24GB free space.
When I look again at /private/var/vm, and sure enough it is 5GB smaller.
This is weird stuff, and I hope this description helps anyone else having this problem.
What's interesting is, because the /private folder is invisible, you can't use it to calculate your disk space usage. For example, the folders on my drive had the following space usage:
62.46GB34.53GB+22.96GB+4.78GB4.02GB = 128.75GB (plus a few "small" folders with maybe 300MB)
Since the drive showed 159GB total space available, I couldn't figure out where the other 30GB was.
Once I found /private/log, I could see it had 19.29GB:
62.4634.53+22.96+4.78+4.0219.29 = 148.04 - ah, this makes more sense, but I'm still missing 10GB! So, I look at /private/vm, and boom, there is the extra 10.6GB hiding. All 159GB present and accounted for.
The question I have is, of course, can anyone explain why this is happening, so I can prevent it from happening again?
I hope someone finds this helpful.

Thanks... that is helpful. I have Carbon Copy Cloner, not
Super Duper, so I will keep that solution in mind.
Do not, repeat do not, clone your current suspect hard drive
to your CCC backup. That would defeat the purpose of having
a good backup. I don't know if you can boot from you CCC
backup. That would be a good test. I was able to boot from
my SuperDuper backup and notice normal hard drive space.
In the meantime, I ran the extended system test, and the
computer passed.
Mine with the growing hard drive passed every test I had plus
the test Apple recommended. They were quick place the blame
on a Virtual Windows XP Pro. I do not thing that was the
problem. My normal Macintosh HD is usually about 52 GB
and it was showing 110 GB used and I never could figure out
what was hogging the hard drive.
Good luck!

Hard drive filling up, can I use external hard drive for my library?

Hello all!
My hard drive on my Sony laptop only has 30G harddrive, and as I am downloading my Cd collection and buy it tunes videos etc., into my ipod, my computer is slowing down and overloading because of all the other programs I have in there. So far my solution is to delete the videos I have purchased and watched (Series "24") so as not to demand too much of my resourses. I just purchased a seperate 80G hard drive in order to place my photos and other space consuming files there, and wonder how and if I can MOVE my library from my itunes software and place it also onto this small seperate hard drive, so that I can get a few more years out of this laptop? So far I haven't seen if that's possible, just that it can be copied. I want to be able to sync regularly and I don't know if can without re-loading all the data back into the library in my itunes software ON the computer.
Solutions, anyone?
HELP!
Thanks, Flutist Renee

If you are using iTunes 7, this method is a little more up to date: How to move your iTunes library to an external drive

Hard Drive fills up and I can't find what is filling it

I have twice in the last month received a warning that my hard drive was very full and I should move some files. I had abou 300 MB free. The first time it did this I cleared it until I had about 11 G free. I was careful to quickly move files after that.
When it happened last week, I didn't have much I could remove, so I cleared out Garageband and some other items and cleared 6G.
I decided to do a new install of Tiger and first backed up the files by moving them into a folder on my LaCie hard drive. When I moved everything from the hard drive, it amounted to only 10.5 G.
I re-installed using the archive system rather than a clean re-install. My reason for this is that I have one Classic Application (Adobe Pagemill) which I still use and I didn't want to lose the capacity to use Classic.
Today I did a disk repair -- a couple of trees needed fixing -- but the outcome was still that I had only 5.6 G free on a 38.5G drive. I can account for 10 so that would mean there are about 25 G of stuff that I can't account for or find to dump.
Can anyone help me?

Hi, Sheila —
Edit: Great news! SInce I'd already written this when I saw your 2nd post, I thought I'd post it anyway, as it includes a couple of other suggestions...
(1) You may find Dr. Smoke's Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk FAQ useful.
(2) What about "invisible" files? Many folks facing problems like you describe eventually discover just how much space is taken up by invisible files — not accessible by Finder — and that some of them may be unnecessary. For example, if you've ever used Norton Antivirus, it may have have created spacesuckingfile.xxxxxx — a huge (and hidden) file that you'd definitely want to "seek-and destroy." (This article tells how.)
The 3rd-party utilities WhatSize or OmniDiskSweeper can help you to identify "invisible" files that may be using a lot of disk capacity — but, if you don't know what something is/does, please don't delete it. Post back for help.
Anyway, my guess is that between (1) and (2), you'll be able to "clean house" pretty well...
(3) Btw, I'm confused why you'd think that an erase & install process would preclude your using Classic... would you please explain the basis for that idea?
HTH! and
Warm regards,
Dean
[1,886 ⊥ 3,285]

Hard drive filled with unknown files

I Have A vexing problem: I have a 2009 iMac with a 320 gob hard drive, and runniNg Mavericks. I have multiple external hard drives on which I keep all of my photos, movies, music and backups. I have ONE user and checking all of the folders I that user account only 34gb are taken up. Yet when I Get Info for that entire user folder it says it is taking up 254 gb. what could possibly be taking up more than 200 gb of invisible files And how can I possibly find and remove them?

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.
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 the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside 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 or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Ignore any other messages that appear in the Terminal window.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Why is my hard drive filling up? 'this user tip is completed'

The first most common question arises out of an industry standard for hard drives. The industry considers 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1 million bytes = 1 megabyte, etc... When in actuality they are multiples of 1024. This article from Apple's knowledgebase explains it in more detail:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30065
You can use the program called Whatsize to determine if there is something eating up your hard disk space:
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php
In addition, people with older versions of MacAlly iShock drivers have been known to have increasingly large logfiles. Updating the drivers fixes this known bug.
Incomplete burns or backups with Carbon Copy Cloner will result in lost space. If you use the latter, there are instructions for clearing your /Volumes/ directory on Bombich's website.
You can typically save quite a bit of space by removing all the non-English languages from your installation (which was a customizable option when you first installed) using the utility Monolingual:
http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/
I keep my Safari cache at 1 MB in its preferences.
If you leave your computer on overnight certain logfiles can be cleaned up and space saved. The freeware Macjanitor can force these cleanup tasks to happen:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html
Though I try to keep my machine cleaned up by leaving it on overnight at least once a month.
Once you have at least 2 GB free, you can burn to CD at least twice any data you may want to access at a later time but don't need immediately.
Short of these solutions, deleting files which you don't need, and backing up those which you do off the main disk is probably the best way to handle losing lots of space. Use this article as well as other good backup solutions on the net to determine what you need to backup:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301239
If you have a question about how to simplify your backup process, there are quite a few people on Apple Discussions who can offer you some suggestions.

Hi
Please find the link given below might help you to fix your issue.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-use-unallocated-drive-space-in-windows.html
Let us know how it goes!
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Manjunath

G5 Hard Drive filling up

I noticed that my hard drive is rather fuller than I would have expected. I am running OS X 10.4. How can I easily see what applications etc. are taking up all of this space?
Thanks,
LMP

My choice, and there are others, is DiskSweeper
http://www.omnigroup.com/omnidisksweeper
From time to time, running a SuperDuper backup and restore cleans out temp files and re-organizes all your directories.
If you think it is time to move your drive to backup duties and put in a new one, WD Caviar 640GB $105.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD6400AAKS/
http://www.barefeats.com/harper14.html
http://www.barefeats.com/harper9.html
Even 1TB drives like Samsung F1 are affordable.
http://eshop.macsales.com/Item_XLR8YourMac.cfm?ID=10675&Item=SAMHD103UJ
Depending how much free space, what percent, "full" can be 70% or more. Whether you keep your data and media on 2nd drive, or whether running off stripped RAID would be best bet.

Why is my macbook pro 500gb hard drive filled up when I have only 1,000 songs and two home movies

i have a macbook pro with a 500 gb hard drive. there is only about 20 gb left open. i have about 1,000 songs and a couple of home movies that are about 30 min. in length. how can i find out what is on my hard drive that is taking up so much space?

Find out what's taking space on your Mac hard drive
Mac 101: Six steps for tracking down hard drive space hogs
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Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk

Hard Drive Filling.

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