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

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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:
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If you find this post helpful, please rate!

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Keep getting startup disk full messages but I have plenty of HD space

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