Mac OS X hard disk memory discrepancies, virtual memory culprit?

Recently my iMac (2.4 ghz intel core 2 duo, 4 GB ram, 320 GB HD running Snow Leopard 10.6.5 ) has started acting really weird. Mainly, the hard drive space has reached almost zero for no apparent reason. I've added up the volumes of the four files on my drive (Applications, Users, Library, and System) and come up with a sum of only 123.94 GB taken up. I've also scanned my drive using OmniDiskSweeper and Disk Inventory X (the two programs recommended to me via colleagues and tech support) and came up with a similar result (give or take a gigabyte). Eventually i checked the Activity monitor, and found to my surprise that a whopping ~135 GB was being used for virtual memory purposes. The virtual memory usage was read right after startup with no background programs running. Currently my drive only has 4 to 5 GB of free space on it, and that's after deleting certain unnecessary programs and files. i've tried rebooting my mac several times, but to no avail, and the trash bin is empty. I don't even have space on my hard disk to burn a DVD through iDVD anymore, and i need that capability for my job. Is virtual memory the culprit behind these problems? What can i do to fix this?

Eventually i checked the Activity monitor, and found to my surprise that a whopping ~135 GB was being used for virtual memory purposes.
This is misleading.
Is virtual memory the culprit behind these problems?
No. The actual problem is most likely excessively large items in /private/var/log/ and/or /Volumes/; the Finder's Go to Folder command can be used to navigate to both. You may also want to check the actual VM swap space in /private/var/vm/, but shouldn't delete anything in there.
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Formatted Hard Disk Memory

Hi,
I am new to the Mac world, and I just got my iBook with a hard disk memory of 80G. However, when I checked out the formatted memory, 20G has already been used, leaving slightly more than 60G. Is this typical? My last notebook was only 20G (not a mac), and the formatted memory was around 17G. If any one can enlighten me, I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks!

Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
This amount of available space is not unusual. The "80GB" capacity is a marketing term, the Finder will report an actual formatted capacity of about 74GB. Mac OS X takes up more than 3GB and iDVD and Garage Band each take up more than 2GB of hard drive space. When you add the games and other software that comes with an iBook, 14GB of used space is just about normal. You might want to take a peek at this previous topic:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1040919
-Doug

About the amount of hard disk memory used during Testdrive installation

Dear all,
I have a question about installing SAP Netweaver Testdrive on Redhat Linux Enterprise 5.3. Currently I have a virtual machine (sun virtualbox) where Windows Vista is host and the guest operating system is RHLE 5.3 (32 bit). For doing several tests I would like to install the Testdrive on this linux system. Yet, the total available virtual hard disk memory is about 15 GB and I have already used more than 6GB.
Is there any way to specify the amount of hard disk memory used by Netweaver once it installs DB2 on the system? Because as it seems to me it takes more than 15 GB just for the database. But I'm not sure whether the whole space is really needed, particularly in my case where the aim of use is just for ABAP development and tests (for self-training).
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Hi,
You can refer the specific installation guide for the minimum disk space requirement.
Whatever functionality you use you need minimum space as mentioned in the installation guide.
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Significant hard disk memory lost.

Greetings,
Any idea how come 600MB of my hard disk memory suddenly disappeared? Dose it due to Microsoft Word ,PowerPoint and Excel? Currently i'm doing my assignments with these 3 programs. Also, "Microsoft User Data" keep appearing on my document folder. How can i keep it away from my document folder and straight away dump it to the trash??
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If you use Entourage the user data file is required. I have no idea what may cause the space usage on the drive. You can use a utility like WhatSize - VersionTracker or MacUpdate to see what large files or folders are on the drive. Be careful about what you choose to delete unless you know the consequences.

HT2584 How to delete programs from my mac book pro hard disk?

How to delete programs from mac book pro hard disk?

There is a better chance of getting help if you are specific.
Does dragging to the trash work? does it use an uninstaller? new to mac and unsure?
There are even 3rd party utilities to help remove programs.

HT202796 I can not copy, modify, any file from my Mac to external hard disk, of the seagate brand (fast HDD Portable Drive) I don´t know if I need some software to copy and modify files in my hard disk external ? Could you help me please?

Hello I have a iMac with 3.4 GHZ intel core I7, memory 16 GB 1333 MHZ DDR3, and OS X 10.9.4 Software.
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Click on it, choose Get Info from the File menu, and check the format.
If it's formatted as NTFS, reformat it as MS-DOS, exFAT, or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as desired, or install software such as Paragon NTFS on the computer.
If it's formatted as FAT32 or exFAT, use the Disk Utility's Repair Disk command on it; this may also happen for a flash drive which is about to fail.
If it's formatted as Mac OS Extended, click Authenticate and provide your administrator password, or change the permissions on that specific folder in its Get Info window.
(110769)

Hard disk memory disappearing

hi
i have a power book G4 running panther OSX 10.3.9 about 4 years old but the hardrive is only 2 years old.
it's memory filled up recently so i removed 3 gigs worth of memory. i then downloaded a pdf form only for all the free memory to disappear. so i cleaned out more memory about 1.4 gigs worth only for that to disappear as well. is this a virus or a consequence of running the computer with hardly any memory.
any ideas will be greatfully received

Hi Zacster!
What size is the Hard Drive, and how much free space is available?
To find that info, click once on the Hard Drive icon to highlight it.
Press the Command + I keys to Get Info.
What is displayed for:
Capacity: ?
Available: ?
Used: ?
As Thomas Bryant posted, insufficient available space, can cause performance issues, system corruption, and possible loss of data.
Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.
Review the suggestions, in the documents that I have linked to below.
Authored by Dr Smoke:
Problems From Insufficient RAM And Free Hard Disk Space
Freeing Space On Your Mac OS X Startup Disk
Have you ever run any routine Maintenance procedures, as suggested in the articles linked to below?
Mac OS X 10.3/10.4: System Maintenance, authored by Gulliver
Maintaining Mac OS X, authored by Dr Smoke
Is the Mac shutdown overnight, or does it run 24/7?
If you turn the Mac off nightly, the Background Maintenance Tasks, are never run.
These can also be run, using a Third-Party utility, or manually using Terminal, to run the CRON Commands.
I use MacJanitor, when necessary.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
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When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:
sudo periodic weekly
This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
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When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.3.x, authored by Michael Conniff.
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
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Hard Disk Memory - where are you?

I have the MacBook Air a few months now. I've had the error message 'Start up Disk Full', so I cleared off old vids etc and got a few clean up tips from YouTube videos. That's ok for now.
I've used Disk Discovery to see what level of memory is taken up in files on the hard disk. From what I can gather 37Gb is taken up by everything - user and system files etc. My system resources say I have 12Gb free and the HD is 64Gb. I can't uncover where the other 15Gb is.
So, my question is two fold - How much of my 64Gb should be taken up by system files (I assumed about 10Gb) and where can I locate the remainder of my memory?
All hints & tips welcome. I want to fill up a 32Gb iPod from my iTunes.
Ta,
Phil.

If you go to the Apple Menu, select "About This Mac", and click "Storage", you'll get a sense of how much everything is taking up on your Mac.
The system is going to take up about 10-15GB of space.
Here are some hints to eek out some more storage.
Download and run Monolingual. It is free and will remove all the languages you are not going to use within the OS. For me, I only speak and use English, so I removed everything but English and saved about 1.5GB of storage space.
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Always keep about 10% of your storage free. The OS constantly writes/deletes information and the less free space it has to work with the slower it will perform.
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Regarding hard disk memory

Can the memory of hard disk reduce? My hard disk capacity is 500 GB . It is showing 400 GB in windows and 20 GB in ubuntu . Is the remaining memory lost?
prudhvi

Hello prudhvi,
Based on the screenshot, the capacity is seemed right.
About the hard drive actually capacity, it is recommended to contact the manufacturer.
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Fangzhou CHEN
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"Virtual Hard Disks" vs. 'Virtual Machines"

Under Hyper-V Manager, right-click HOST PC, select "Hyper-V" settings. Under Server is shown
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Hard disks memory is full

Hello all,
Now I work only 2 weeks with the SAP BW. Now it came to a mistake. I just encountered some errors while working with this database. So far there was an error while creating new tables because of an lack of hard disk space. For now it's impossible to extend the hard disk space. Therefore, I'd like to delete the data we don't really need anymore like old log data.
Could please anyone recommend some additional data which I probably could delete?
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Björn

Hi,
The first point will be PSA requests.
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Thanks,
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Mac OS X hard disk memory discrepancies, virtual memory culprit?

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