Hard Drive Full after 10.4.9?

My FW800 dual-G4 has 4 HDs with about 12 partitions.
My 2-week old backup of my boot drive uses about 10 of 20 GB.
All of a sudden, my boot drive thinks it's using 15 of 20 GB, athough the content looks very similar to the backup.
The whatsize.app says the boot drive uses about 10 GB.
I started up from the backup, and performed DiskFirstAid and DiskWarrior on the boot. Then back starting on the boot, did a delocalize.
Where are those other 5 GB??? ... Al
G4/1.25DP FW800; Mini-1.66GHz; PB-G4 12; Pismo G3   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Francine - Thanks for the reply. The pointers to
/private/var/spool/cups/tmp
were right on. I discovered this just before reading your response, by examining the disk contents in iDefrag (which I had run from the alternate startup) where I found a large contiguous group of /private/var/spool/cups/tmp files, absent on the alternate (backup). That led me to search these discussions for /cups/tmp where I found several other threads that you had contributed in.
I tried the terminal method without success. Then I did the Printer System Reset within Printer Setup Utility.app - had to do it 3 times before it worked! Got my 5 GB back.
Thanks a bunch! ... AL
G4/1.25DP FW800; Mini-1.66GHz; PB-G4 12; Pismo G3 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Similar Messages

  • Hard Drive Full - After Reboot, Will Not Boot to Mac OS - Boot Camp OK Tho?

    Hello all,
    I having a severe issue with my 2007 Macbook Pro 2.33 w/10.6.xx (I believe I'm up to 10.6.2). Yesterday I was on the net in Firefox and got a message from the OS that my hard drive was full and that I had to kill some running apps to recover needed virtual memory. I killed everything but Firefox, finished my web-based game and shut down. The next time I attempted to start the computer, it would not go past the "gray screen with Apple logo and spinning wheel". In fact, if I hold the option key at startup, I can see my Windows Boot Camp partition, any bootable CD/DVD I might have in the drive and "EFI Boot" only. I cannot see Macintosh HD as option.
    Here is a list of things I have done/tried:
    1. The day before yesterday, Mac OS (10.6.xxx) informed me on my 2007 15" 2.33 MBP that it was out of HDD space and I needed to kill some apps to recover virtual memory.
    2. I force killed everything but FF since I was in a game of Settlers on Asobrain at the time!
    3. The computer ran fine for the rest of the session.
    4. When I rebooted, all I could get was gray screen and spinning wheel.
    5. I forced shut down, tried again, same thing.
    6. I tried resetting PRAM with Ctrl-Cmd-P-R at startup, same thing.
    7. I tried booting to safe mode. I got past login but it never loaded anything but the default background wallpaper. I shutdown.
    8. I booted from the Snow Leopard DVD and ran disk verify, then disk repair but it could not be completed as the drive has been "corrupted".
    9. At this point all I get upon startup now is Gray screen w/ Apple, then spinning wheel with progress bar that never goes anywhere then it shuts itself down.
    10. When I start the computer in Target Disk Mode (TDM), only my Boot Camp partition will mount, not my Mac HD
    11. *I do have boot camp installed, with XP Pro, and it will boot without a problem. In fact, I have HFSExplorer (a free utility f . or reading HFS volumes while in Windows) installed on the Windows side and I can see/browse folders on the Mac partition, so on the fact alone that I can boot to windows I know I don't have a HDD failure.
    12. I have also tried booting to Single User mode which worked, I got the prompt. I tried using the "fsck -fy" command and it could not repair the volume.
    13. I have tried creating an image of the Macintosh HD while in Disk Utility booted from the Mac Install DVD, but I get an "i/o error".
    Please help! Any good suggestions, help, etc. is much appreciated! -Kyler

    Hello and welcome to the discussions. All OS X drives need to keep 10-15% free space. If you were operating with less that that capacity, it is quite possible that some files were overwritten. Thus corrupted. The only thing that I could suggest is to try to copy your drive to an external HD or another Mac (Space permitting) Then reinstall using the install disc. You will then have to physically copy files from the external to your new install.
    How large was your HD and how much free space does it have? You can use the install disc and Disk Utility to find out.
    Cheers,
    Glynn

  • My mac air says hard drive full and 90% is full of 'other' which I cant work out what 'other' is as i Have transferred most to my external hard drive

    My mac air says hard drive full and 90% is full of 'other' which I cant work out what 'other' is as i Have transferred most to my external hard drive.
    Do you know how I can tell how large each file is taking up and what my 'other' category could be?
    thanks

    Initial easy steps to gain disk space:
    - Delete all files in the Downloads folder.
      Empty the Trash.
    - Start iPhoto.
      Empty its trash.
      Restart.
    Backup:
    Run a Time Machine (or other) backup since you are about to delete and move files and you may need to recover from any inadvertent mistakes or decisions.  You will need one external hard drive for your Time Machine (or other) backup and a second if you plan to offload some files.  (See suggestions for where to purchase hard drives at the end of this message.)
    For more about backups:
    Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
    Most commonly used backup methods:
    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
    Methodology to protect your data.  Backups vs. Archives.  Long-term data protection:
    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
    Deleting files:
    Then use the free application OmniDiskSweeper http://www.omnigroup.com/more to explore your volume in descending order by size so you can attack the problem from the top down, deleting the largest unwanted files first.  Delete with caution and do not delete any system files.  Remember to empty the trash after trashing the files.
    Additional reference on freeing disk space:
    http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
    Offloading files:
    Consider moving some of the no-often-used large files or directories to an external disk.  Use ODS again to find them.  This will be at least your second hard drive.  Your first one(s) is/are for your Time Machine (or other) backup(s).  Do not offload files onto a Time Machine disk.
    Format the second drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled).  Using OWS to find large files/folders and copy them from the system drive to the external hard drive and delete them from your internal drive.
    Then  > System Preferences > Time Machine > Options… > Remove the offload HD name from the exclusions list.
    Now both your system disk and your external offload disk will be backed up onto your Time Machine disk.
    From: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
    To move your iTunes Music folder to another disk or partition:
    To change the location of your iTunes Music folder, carefully follow the instructions in the AppleCare® Knowledge Base document "iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder."Additional information can be found in iTunes Help.
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thexlab.com/105/ 00000849.html
    Laptop users may want to consider having two iTunes libraries: a small library of current favorites on their computer, while their complete library resides on an external hard drive. Utilities like iTunes Library Manager enable you to easily have multiple iTunes libraries you can use with your account.  https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7689/itunes-library-manager
    To move your iPhoto Library folder to another disk or partition:
    To move the iPhoto Library folder to a new location, employ the instructions in the AppleCare Knowledge Base document from http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506 corresponding to the version of iPhoto you are using. Additional information can be found in iPhoto Help.
    Laptop users may want to consider having two iPhoto libraries: a small library of current, favorite photographs on their computer, while their complete library, or archives of older photos are saved on an external hard drive. Utilities such as iPhoto Buddy and iPhoto Library Manager enable you to have multiple iPhoto libraries that you can use with your account.
    https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12175/iphoto-buddy
    https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7158/iphoto-library-manager
    Hardware — Bigger disk/SSD:
    OWC sells 120, 240 and 480 GB SSD upgrades for MacBook Airs.  A 240 GB upgrade costs $265.   http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ .  If your Mac is under warranty or AppleCare replacing the SSD will void the warranty.

  • Why is my hard drive full when I only have the operating system loaded and nothing else?  No pics, music, nothing...It's the 60 Gig hard drive on the air built in late 2010.

    Why is my hard drive full when I'm only running the operating system and nothing else is loaded?  No music, pics, nothing! I understand the hard drive is small at 60 gig, but I can't believe the os would take up that much space.

    First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB free on the startup volume for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. Use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved. 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 really see everything, you have to run it as root. Back up all data now. 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. After installing ODS in the Applications folder, drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
    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.
    I don't recommend that you make a habit of this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. When you're done with it, quit it and also quit Terminal.

  • I had backed up my I-tunes files to an external hard drive but after my computer crashed when I try to reload from the hard drive the message comes up saying I-tunes library cannot be read because it was created by a newer version. Help please!

    I had backed up my I-tunes files to an external hard drive but after my computer crashed and I restored it when I try to reload from the hard drive the message comes up ""I-tunes files cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of I-tunes". Help Please

    Upgrade the version of itunes on the new computer
    Itunes.com for free download.
    Peace

  • I bought Creative suite 5 a few years ago, my computer's hard drive failed, after It was fixed I re installed my program and it now says my Serial number is not valid.

    I bought Creative suite 5 a few years ago, my computer's hard drive failed, after It was fixed I re installed my program and it now says my Serial number is not valid.
    I'm on the last day of a 30 day trail... it won't take my serial number which is the same one that worked before

    Contact support by web chat.
    Mylenium

  • New Macbook Pro hard drive crash after 9 months?  How to avoid it again...?

    Hi - I've just had my hard drive replaced after it crashed - only after 9 months!!!!  How can this be?  I thought Macs were supposed to be more resilient and reliable?   I always kept the software up to date.
    Is there anything I should be doing to avoid this happening again?  
    - let the battery run down completely / always keep it charged and power source plugged in?
    - don't run too many programmes at once?
    - shut down completely rather than sleep mode?
    If anyone has any tips / advice...otherwise I'm considering selling it.
    Thanks

    You can't just take that drive from the older system and install it in the new system. Even though both run Lion the Lion install on the older system does not have the correct driver set for the new hardware. In fact Apple came out with a newer version of Lion Just For these Newer System.
    It may now be on the Apple servers bot it wasn't a few days, 5-12, ago..

  • Hard Drive FULL, trying to move files

    My startup disk and hard drive are full.  I've backed up my machine two ways (two external hard drives to be redundant) I'm paranoid of losing pictures and music.  I want to remove my pictures from mentioned machine (2007 Macbook Pro) and put pictures on my wife's Macbook Pro which is much newer and had adequate storage space. 
    Heck I don't even have to do that, I just want to lose the 38gb of pictures on this machine.  I cannot open iPhoto because it says it has to update my library to view picures, but when it attempts to do so the message comes up that there isn't enough room on the Hard Drive.  When I try to move photos all I see is iPhoto Library icon, and you cannot open/explore at all.  My questions is do I delete the whole library?  I was planning on going through the library first to try and get rid of duplicate phtotos (which for some reason there is alot of) and then re assesing. 
    Second Question, if I delete off my computer, can I put only some back on my machine?  I'd probably only put on more recent pics, but need to know. 
    After that is all worked out, can I put the entire library on another Macbook Pro by simply adding the entire iPhoto library onto that machine?  Happy Sunday THANKS!

    1. The iPhoto library is a SQLite database and there are no user serviceable parts in it. You CAN NOT modify it in any way except using iPhoto. Using the finder or any other program will corrupt the database and cause data loss
    2. Typically there are no duplicates within the iPhoto library. There will always be two or three versions of each photo. These are critical to the operation if iPhoto and can not be deleted (see #1)
    3. The iPhoto library must be treated as a single entity. To move it simply drag it to the new location intact as a single entity
    4. To move selected photos between libraries use iPhoto Library Manager
    LN

  • Is there a way to recover hard drive data after backing up via Time Machine (from Time Capsule)?

    iMac 27", Mid 2011
    2.7GHz Intel Core i5
    Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63b)
    Apple Time Capsule (May 2012)
    Greetings,
    Is there a way to recover the most recent version of your hard drive, after you installed an earlier version. I accidentally restored to an earlier version of my Mac Book lap top and installed it on my iMac desk top. I installed the earlier version using an Apple Time Machine and Apple Time Capsule.
    I see some recovery software online, but I'm not sure if I should buy one or if there's another way to approach this problem.
    The restored version has some of my files, but it's 2 full years old!
    Am I dead in the water?
    I appreciate any advice you can offer on alternative recovery techniques or recovery software recommendations.
    Sincerely,
    Chuck "dying over here" B.

    Hey R,
    Thanks for the quick reply.
    Unfortunately the whole time I thought the TM/TC was backing up correctly as the thing was starting and stopping as if everything was fine. I guess I was blinded by the little green light that was always on.  So actually it does not have a recent version of my iMac, - it only lists old 2011 and 2012 versions of my Macbook.   I suppose I screwed something up at setup, and as it was hard lined (via a T5 cable) into my iMac, and the Macbook was shut down in a drawer, I never realized the error.
    The restored version is less than a Gig, so there's plenty of room left on the iMac (1TB HD). As such, I'm hoping that most of the files have not really been overwritten.
    I'm willing to pay to have it professionally recovered, but is that even possible?
    C

  • Rapidly decreasing hard-drive space after upgrading to snow leopard

    So... recently upgraded to SL on my just over 1 year old MBP. No problems at first, but now acting really... odd...
    When I first upgraded I had moved a bunch of files over to an external drive to have enough hard drive space. Had 11GB open when I upgraded, up to 23GB after the upgrade. Then, the other night, I suddenly get a "your startup disk is full" message. I was shocked. Checked and sure enough, had something like 270KB open. I had not saved any new files on the hard drive since I upgraded. Right after I got this message my computer spazzed out and I got a "you must restart your computer" message. Did, and afterwords had 7GB of free space on my hard drive. Don't know what happened to my 23 from a few days prior...
    Since then, I have gotten the "your startup disk is full" message several times. When I check, I have everything from 3GB to 0KB of free space. Usually a restart solves the problem for a few hours, but then it pops up again. (In fact, as I wrote that, the message popped up on my screen once again... when I started this post I had 500-something KB free. Currently have 257KB free... again... no files saved/downloaded in the past few days...)
    I've never had a problem like this before, and this is BEYOND annoying at this point... considering I've lost all the free space I freed up BEFORE I even upgraded, not to mention the extra space I was supposed to get by upgrading in the first place... plus I've had to restart my computer 5-6 times over the past 2 days, which is more than I've had to do it in the year that I've owned it...
    anyone else having similar problems? Any ideas as to what might be going on??

    So I'm having the same problem. I was converting songs in iTunes and browsing the web in Safari with a few torrents running in the background with Transmission. All the sudden the computer started hanging and I decided to restarted. After the restart, the Apple logo showed on the grey startup screen with a white progress bar (looked like a firmware update). When it completed and booted to the login screen I got a prompt that my startup disk was full and to delete some files. I know this can't be right because I had about 50GB free on my startup disk. Then after restart I noticed that the drive was fluctuating a lot! It first said I had ~250MB free, then jumped to 698 - 769MB!
    I'm attempting a Snow Leopard install DVD startup and Disk Utility fix for repair and permissions. I really hope my HDD hasn't decided to randomly crap out. :-/

  • Missing hard drive space after bootcamp partition

    After making a 60gb partition with Boot Camp Assistant, Bootcamp closed without error message (i assumed it was trying to restart but i had programs running). However now in disk utility or when i try to run the windows disc, there is no partition available even though the 500gb hard drive shows up as 420gb used and 18gb unused (and 499gb big).
    I have tried repairing in disk utility on startup
    i have reset the NVRAM or whatever it is called.
    Can't run boot camp assistaint again because it says i require at least 10gb of space.
    Can anyone help me finish the installation?

    If done correctly it should not be necessary to reinstall anything, just restore the clone.
    Buy 2 drives, a backup drive should be at least as large as the drive it is backing up, and yours is almost full at the moment.
    My suggestion, clone your internal drive to an external, this is for restoration. The restoration can be done to any compatible drive so buy the biggest you can afford/fit.
    Backup is another issue, if you choose Time Machine your existing internal drive will be too small to accommodate a 1Tb replacement drive for very long, but it's a start.
    Choose what you wish to do, post back if you need assistance.

  • Hard drive full of back up files, cant move them out

    i am new to mac's, i am using a macpro retina 13".
    i recently put all my photos in iphoto & edited few home videos in imovie & later moved my iphoto library to an external hard drive. i checked my hard drive for space after moving the iphoto library out to the external drive but it seems to be full, i checked out the storage area in "about my mac" it shows me that the mac hard drive has back ups. i am using an external hardrive for timemachine backups.
    my time machine backup was not connected to my mac when i did all the work. i later connected the hard drive & did timemachine back up but the files in the macdrive does not see to move out.
    i have attached a pic of the hard drive status in about my mac.
    please help me to move this large file out my mac to the external hard drive.
    thank you.

    You really should understand what these Time Machine Local Snapshots are and how the impact the storage:
    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202301
    In effect that are temporary and will be deleted as may be required for other data.  You may simply ignore them since they will have no adverse affect on the MBP SSD.
    Ciao.

  • Early 2009 Mini's internal hard drive slow after sleep

    I'm posting this in the hope that somebody else may have the same problem, and may have a fix. My Mac Mini doesn't go into full sleep, usually it just shuts off the monitor. And that doesn't bother me, because I know it's on account of my third-party mouse and keyboard.
    What does bother me is that after waking from sleep, the mini is very sluggish. Anything that requires you access to the internal hard drive results in a spinning beach ball and bouncing Application icons in the dock. A quick check of the activity Monitor showed very little going on CPU–wise. If one application that might have been able to shed some light on the subject, Drive Genius, was unable to work on the internal drive because it was the boot drive. I would've had to reboot, regarding new would have solved the problem.
    At that point I gave up and decided to restart the machine so I can get some work done. As soon as I selected the “restart” from the Apple menu, got a kernel panic. At this point I'm concerned about the integrity of the internal drive. The mini is only about a year old, and I have AppleCare, but I'm hoping it is not that serious. The drive checks out in Disk Utility, BTW.
    Any ideas?

    The keyboard is a Macally Bluetooth (full size) keyboard. I bought it because I didn't like the little Apple BT kbd. No special drivers for the kdb.
    The mouse is a Targus BT mouse, and it does have a System Preferences pane because it has 2 programmable buttons on the side (besides left, right, and center/scroll).
    The system is set up as a server as well as my personal machine, so it has "wake for network access" checked in Energy Saver settings. It never goes to sleep fully unless I turn off the kbd and mouse and then push the power button. Then it pulses. Otherwise, it just turns off the monitor and stays awake, I assume.
    Often I leave Safari and Mail running, and I know Mail is constantly getting stuff because both accounts are IMAP accounts. But even when those apps are closed, it still doesn't fully sleep. I have it set to display sleep in 5 min, complete sleep in 10, and to put HD to sleep when idle.
    Hope those answers help, thanks for taking the time to respond!
    K.

  • Hard drive full - MacBook Air

    The hard drive on my MacBook Air is almost completely full. It says that over 60 GB of "Other" is being used, but I have no idea what is taking up all that space. I can't find anything in my files, and I cleared all of my downloads. It's so full that I can't save any documents or update the software.

    Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
      1. See Lion's 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.
    Consider an external drive to store your files.
    The "other" are files that cannot be classified into the other categories. This can include data files, mail data, cache files, system files, etc. Make a bootable backup of your drive, boot from it, erase your internal drive, then restore the backup after pruning out files you can store elsewhere.

  • Computer hard drive full

    My computer hard drive is 30 GB, Ipod is 60 GB. Computer is full. If I cut Itune music folder to a Maxtor backup disk (this will free 28 GB on laptop), can I start adding stuff again (on laptop) without losing everything already on IPOD when I go to update IPOD?
    Lots of movies and TV shows I paid for and don't want to lose.

    You can delete songs from your iTunes/computer hard drive after transferring them to the iPod, and for this you need to set your iPod to manage the songs manually.
    However, this is an extremely risky option because when (and not if) there comes a time to restore your iPod, which is a very common fix for iPod problems, then all the music would be erased. If you no longer have the music in iTunes (or any other back up), then all that music would be lost.
    My suggestion would be to bring that Maxtor hard drive home, transfer a back up copy of your music to it before you start deleting stuff from your laptop hard drive.
    That way you will have a back up if things go wrong with your iPod.
    The iPod is not a reliable enough device for storing the only copy of your music.

Maybe you are looking for