Missing disk space Problem

Hi,
I have recently purchased a T61p from lenovo equipped with a hard drive of capacity 120GB. I have never regretted buying a thinkpad since. Except for the fact that after a couple of weeks I kept losing huge amounts of disk space from my hard drive. I assumed this was due to the downloads I was doing and hence, purchased a WD 500 gig hard drive. I shifted my downloads folder including everything that I ever downloaded to it. I then found out I gained only 20-30GB which was the size of my downloads folder (I never bothered to check it earlier.). Now I was down with missing a whopping amount of 60GB. I dont know if a solution already exists for this as could not find any search results for missing disk space. (For users who are still suffering with the same issue and do not want to read all the trouble I went through, scroll down till you find a void for the solution). As always I sought the almighty google's help. There were a million pages on how vista eats up space for backup and recovery. But after about an hour of surfing over a 100 pages and trying the solutions in vain, I found out that vista takes a max of 15% of disk space. But I lost 60GB then I found out that the trouble was not with vista but with the Thinkvantage R&R utility. I then remembered a prompt form thinkvantage s/w stating that my hard drive was too low on space and that a backup was not possible that appeared not too long ago.
Solution : (Not recommended if you are prone to crashes and always seek R&R's help to regain control over your box) Delete all the backups and disable R&R. Go to Rescue and Recovery program and click the advanced menu button and select delete all backups. Then go to preferences and uncheck the scheduled backup stuff. (Thats how it worked on my T61p. Don't know if the interface is the same on others.)
I always assumed the extra 6gig that thinkpads usually have as the extra partition has all the restoration data. But I guess 6gig is too small for it and the 6gig only has data to restore the PC back to factory condition. Then I found it funny for a program to have been scheduled to make backups of sizes 30GB or perhaps the total used space for a hard drive that is of 120 gigs size. What was even more funnier was that this program was scheduled to run "daily!". I don't know if I set it to that option myself unwittingly or if it was the same by default. I wanted to post here just so others know of this well in advance before they go through all the trouble I did. Please delete this post if this was a known issue. If this has been fixed or sorted out please let me know of that too
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Try disabling RR. That might work. You might want to enable it again later.
Note from Moderator: Please update your profile with your correct country location as per the forum rules. Products, options and services vary from market to market. Knowing your location helps us help you.
Message Edited by nonny on 04-19-2008 11:44 AM

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Missing disk space - 'get info' differs from 'du'

Hi there
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But if I use 'df' to see the free space this reports the same as 'get info' - only about 6GB left.
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Thanks for any tips
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Look in /Volumes directory there should only be an alias or mount point for any volumes you have mounted. If a volume didn't mount properly, it is possible to find "name" and "name_1" entries, and for actual files to now reside there.
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Best strategy for iPhoto Disk space problems

My wife is a shutter bug. She has about 20000+ pictures and growing fast. She also has an HD camera.
So, disk space is an issue for us (500G iMac)
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LN

Missing disk space on T400S

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Solved!
Go to Solution.

It's probably taken up by System Restore's restore points. These are found in C:\System Volume Information, and is unaccessible even to the Super-Administrator. The only way to get rid of them is using the "Create a Restore Point" page where there is an option to clear all of the restore points. However, CCleaner's System Restore tab allows you to selectively delete restore points as you desire.
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You probably installed from original Windows XP disk [w/o SP2], and original XP support disks only upto 128gb. If you install SP2/3 later on, the support will be added , but the partition woun't magicaly grow by itself If you want to resize it w/o loosing data you have to use 3rd party tools like GParted Live CD [free] or Partition Magic [commercial] software... http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
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Hi,
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Welcome To  Discussions mfidelman!
What were you backing up, and what method were you using?
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Considering the small amount of free space presently available, I think it could be extremely risky, to download anything at this point.
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1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
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When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
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Disk space problem on MeetingPlace Express

I get the email below daily. I'm thinking it's ok to cat /dev/null the cma.log file?
I also think I might be able to do the same thing to stdout.old?
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* Directory listing
[mpxadmin@meeting ConfSchd]$ ls -la
total 3036516
drwxrwxr-x    2 mpxadmin mpx          4096 Aug 2 13:27 .
drwxrwxr-x   17 root     mpx          4096 Nov 4 2009 ..
-rw-rw-r--    1 mpxadmin mpx             0 Nov 4 2009 ActConf.lk
-rw-rw-r--    1 mpxadmin mpx             0 Nov 4 2009 Attach.lk
-rw-rw-r--    1 mpxadmin mpx             4 Dec 22 2012 confId
-rw-rw-rw-    1 mpxadmin mpx           391 Apr 5 2010 pegstats
-rw-rw-r--    1 mpxadmin mpx        255639 Aug 2 14:25 stderr
-rw-rw-r--    1 mpxadmin mpx       1152127 Dec 22 2012 stderr.old
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-rw-rw-r--    1 mpxadmin mpx      2588797008 Dec 22 2012 stdout.old
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[mpxadmin@meeting ConfSchd]$
* EMAIL
This is an automated message from the MeetingPlace Express system with
hostname [meeting.afgrp.com] to inform you that disk space is low.
Details on where the problem is and how to resolve it are indicated below.
Low space in partition /. Percent used = [90].
The following files might cause trouble. However, inspect each one to make sure.
Look specifically for large files with old timestamps. Also, note that some of
the files indicated might have been previously mentioned. In this case, use the
prior instructions to handle these files rather than the instructions below.
If you are uncertain, contact Cisco TAC for confirmation/advice.
For the files below, use the following procedure to empty these files rather than
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         1. For each file to be emptied do:
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         2. After all files that you wish to empty have been emptied, do:
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-rw-rw-r--   1 mpxadmin mpx     283120801 Apr 11 02:00 /var/mp/ConfSchd/stdout
-rw-r-----   1 root     root     127007041 Dec 22 05:30 /var/spool/compaq/cma.log
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/dev/sda1             6048320   5111204   629876 90% /
/dev/sda6             4032092   767336   3059932 21% /common
/dev/sda2             8064304   6492268   1162380 85% /db
/dev/sda9               256667     8416   234999   4% /grub
/dev/sda7           122154520   110696 115838720   1% /mpx-record
/dev/sda5             5036284   3577128   1203324 75% /opt
/dev/sda3             6048352   109032   5632080   2% /partB
none                   1026932     22624   1004308   3% /dev/shm

Hi Josh,
It seems that the root partition of the MeetingPlace Express server is almost full. I have attached a document for your reference which can be used to minimize the disk space issues.
Once the steps mentioned in the attached document are completed, run the command "df" to check the disk space.
If you do not see much improvement in the root partition, then in that case some other files might need to be removed from the server to increase the root partition space.
If any of the partitions reach upto 90% or above, then the server might behave unexpectedly.
Feel free to revert if you have face any issues or have any queries.
Regards,
Rishabh

Finding 'missing' disk space

I have a 2008 MacBook Pro with a 325g hard drive. I want to change the current hard drive for a 240g SSD drive. Unfortunately, I can seem to get the drive down to 200g's. It is running 10.9.1 and all the photos from Lightroom5 and iPhoto have been removed. I have Office 2011 on the drive and that's about it. I can't figure out what is taking up all the disk space.
I have 10.9.1 on a desktop and it runs off a 256g SSD that isn't half full. It has full versions of Lightroom5, Photoshop CC, and Office (although I have several hard drives for image and document storage.
It's driving me crazy trying to identify where the disk space is. I ran Parallels at one time, but removed it and 'uninstalled' it, but I wonder if it is taking up some of the 'missing space'.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6047
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Remove programs and missing disk space

I'm just switched to Mac a few weeks ago and I got problem when I remove program in my MacBook.
Is that ok when I just sent my program to trash and that's all for removing a program? I saw that's some program such as "Adobe Reader" it has a uninstall dmg file but another do not.
After I remove program, my disk's space still doesn't change so did I remove it? My disk's space's 120Gb but I just have 60Gb left now even I did not add a lot of program, so why's it disappear?
MacBook Intel C2D 2.16 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.10) 30 GB iPod Video (Black)

Dragging a file to the Trash does not delete it from the drive until you empty the Trash.
Uninstalling Software: The Basics
Most OS X applications are completely self-contained "packages" that can be uninstalled by simply dragging the application to the Trash. Most applications create preference files which are stored in the /Home/Library/Preferences/ folder. Although they do nothing once you delete the associated application, they do take up some disk space. If you want you can located them in the above location and delete them, too.
Some applications may install an uninstaller program that can be used to remove the application. In some cases the uninstaller may be part of the application's installer, and is invoked by clicking on a Customize button that will appear during the install process.
Some applications may install components in the /Home/Library/Applications Support/ folder. You can also check there to see if the application has created a folder. You can also delete the folder that's in the Applications Support folder. Again, they don't do anything but take up disk space once the application is trashed.
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There are also several shareware utilities that can uninstall applications:
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Yank
SuperPop
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Look for them at www.versiontracker.com or www.mackupdate.com.
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Missing disk space after inserting a USB flash drive

Hello everyone..
I had a little problem with my Aluminum Macbook recently
It started on last sunday, when i pluged in a USB flash drive into my macbook, all of sudden my Macintosh disk free space is gone, from about 50gb left to about 1.5gb...
I ran the disk utility check and repair it fixed the problem, but then again whenever i plug in any usb flash drive(i tried several), it "steals" my free disk space and i have to run th repair programme again..
Any idea of this problem? is it any kind of virus or something else?
thanks

Hi,
*"a restart message."* If it looks like this...
That is called a kernel panic. Sounds like the USB card software/hardware is incompatible with your Mac.
Go here for help to Resolve Kernel Panics
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Disk space problems

Hi guys, have looked around everywhere for some help on this topic but no-one seems to be having the same problem and it's quite hard to know what to search for:
Have been trying to free up space on my HD as I'm aware it's not good to have anywhere near only 10% of free space. The problem I have is deleting large folders and files and emptying trash is not increasing the available disk space at the bottom of the finder window.
I have even used programs like MacKeeper which found and deleted 30GB of unwanted/unnecessary files yet when I go back to check in finder (or Disk utility for that matter) disk space remains the same.
One thing I have noticed however is that "Macintosh HD" seems to have 30Gb of free space and my personal folder seems to have roughly the same amount of free space making around 60GB total free space but this is not picked up on disk utility.
I have seen some comments on the web about filevault causing problems but don't really know where to begin...
My computer does seem to be performing much better since I've started cleaning it up so am now wondering whether the free space has been increased but it's just being reported wrongly
Any input would be much appreciated..
Cheers!

Your FileVault is saved by OS X as a sparsebundle (something like "onjegolders.sparsebundle"), and each time you log into your account it has to be mounted. This mounted volume always expands when you create new files in your Home folder, but it doesn't shrink when you delete files. When you log out, OS X checks if there's free space in your sparsebundle, and it will try to shrink your Filevault to recover any free space.
For example, my FileVault is usually under 1GB. Last week, I had a lot of videos in my Home folder that I was trying to burn to DVD. It caused my FileVault to expand to 27GB. After I burned the videos to DVD, I deleted them and emptied my Trash bin, then restarted my computer. When I logged back in, my FileVault was back down under 1GB.
If your FileVault doesn't reclaim space after rebooting, you might try to verify/repair your sparsebundle (➚). Other people indicate it may be a matter of corrupted files (➚) preventing FileVault from shrinking. If you have less than 15GB of data in your FileVault, you could also just try turning off FileVault temporarily, and then turning it back on to force it to build a new sparsebundle.

Where Does Yosemite Installer Hide? (aka missing disk space)

I've been using a 400GB partition on an external drive for Time Machine backups for some time and it's had plenty of room to work with. I upgraded to Yosemite recently and all was well with the Time Machine backups.
Yesterday I downloaded Yosemite again to install it on a second drive so that I would have a second bootable drive. Today I got notice that there was not enough space on my Time Machine backup drive. Suddenly the 400GB was not enough and my primary boot drive had swollen to 480GB. I don't know what it had been, but obviously there is now a lot more on it than there was.
My assumption is that I have the Yosemite Installer and/or hidden installer files that didn't get cleaned up after the second installation. I can't find anything in hidden files or folders that I recognize as such but soemthing is eating up lots of disk space that I need to free.
Where does the App Store stash downloads in case that's it?
If I hold Option on a restart, I no longer have the Installer as an optional boot disk, but I do get three "Recovery-10"... disks. Possibly those are the problem, but I can't locate them either.
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Ok, I may have found a possible solution. I found this at stack exchange. It's not the best option and it requires a simple shell command, and will not be able to be used to restore from Time Machine, but for backing up one or more directory, at least in the short term, this will work. Here it is:
There seems to be an issue with Yosemite renaming the computer local host by adding (#) after the computer name. There are other reports of this happening in a thread on MacRumors Forum and I believe a few people have blamed this as a cause of time machine backup failures. I've tried a few of the suggestions in the thread but so far none have worked. I've stopped using time machine for now and reverted to an old bash rsync script.
A really simple solution is to open the terminal and type:
rsync -avu ~/ /Volumes/backup_disk/backup_folder
replacing 'backup_disk' with the name of your external hard drive and 'backup_folder' with the name of the backup folder i.e.: 'yosemite_backup'. The three flags -avu mean: archive (a) copy the home directory recursively into sub folders, verbose (v) print to the terminal window everything you are copying (feel free to leave this out) and update (u) will only overwrite files that are newer than the archived file (useful after the initial main backup). This solution isn't as hands off as time machine but at least it's a simple way to back up vital information in Documents and Pictures/Videos.
Hope this helps!
to read the full discussion go to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/151662/os-x-yosemite-time-machine-ident ity-of-the-backup-disk-has-changed

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