My hard drive unexpectedly filled to capacity

My MacBook Pro had 23 GB of free space left on it as of January 1st. I wake up today and I cannot open any applications because the hard disk is filled to capacity. I did not download anything to it and have not done so in a few weeks. How did my hard disk become full all of a sudden? The only thing I can open is folders, I cannot run applications. I deleted a few files and emptied the trash and the capacity is still full.

UPDATE:
I went home and unintstalled Norton. I didn't just do Spotlight, I went to the Symantec folder and there is a file you can click on to uninstall everything related to Norton. The only thing it didn't catch was the Norton Solutions folder, so I manually deleted that. However, it still did not solve my original problem just yet, which is my Hard drive is still completely filled to capacity. When I look at the break down of the size of all my folders, there are no NEW files or folders on their that I do not recognize. When I add up everything it comes to a little less than 70 GB. I have a 100 GB hard drive which actually holds about 92 GB. Basically , there are about 20+ GB of space that is not accounted for. I was told that I should download a program called WhatSize from this website...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21149
This program is supposed to reveal any hidden files and folders and reveal their size, beginning with the largest. I will update later this evening...

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Why does my hard drive suddenly fill to capacity?

MAC Pro running 10.7.5
2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon / 14 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM / 320 GB HD (Stock) + 3 1TB internal drives.
It doesn't matter if I'm even using the computer. The hard drive (320GB) goes from 13GB of free space to 150MB free space and sometimes 0MB of free space and then back to 5GB then 12GB.
I've look into the messages in the console window. I see this message repeated hundreds of times.
2/12/15 9:34:22.770 AM com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud: objc[369]: Object 0x7fff7291ffb0 of class __NSCFBoolean autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking - break on objc_autoreleaseNoPool() to debug
The same with this one:
2/12/15 8:25:57.351 AM com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0: Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
Any idea if these are connected to the hard drive filling up? How do I stop it?

Your OEM 320GB is old, slow, in need of upgrade, and too small!
13GB of free space to 150MB free space
A disk drive needs 10-15% free space to function, and a system boot drive should be more like 50%.
Adobe plugins will use 100GB for cache, in addition to scratch.
The price today for even 500GB (more than you need but heck at $199 they are fast and 1/10th what they cost 6 years ago)
Copy all the non-system folders to a data drive
Clone just the system to a new drive - $85 for 2TB Hitachi would be one idea or a WD Black
Might want to upgrade your 1TB drives over time, and replace one with a drive large enough for TimeMachine - 350% the capacity for all the drives and volumes and system you might need.
System drive should have 'ample' free space, no media or user data or graphic libraries, and keep the system to a minimum, the fewer processes the better in terms of stability and performance.
At this point I wonder what log is filling the drive, maybe printer or error messages, but that the drive's directory is no longer valid or integrity and even disk repair may not be enough.
Adobe has always done better with more RAM, 24-32GB "sweet spot" even along with scratch - and because disk saves are slow and single threaded, fast storage for projects.
A Samsung XP941 ($250 + $25 adapter for 256GB) writes at 900MB/sec and goes in PCIe slot, so about 2x faster than even SATA III along with seamless boot device in any Mac Pro. 500GB is 'nice' but $499, so could serve for system and scratch and plenty of free space.
FBDIMMs are not expensive if you choose to add more, 800MHz NEMIX FBDIMM on Amazon.

When I power up my Mac-Pro I only get a flashing file folder with a ? inside the folder. I suspect my hard drive is maxed to capacity can anyone help me as to what I should do?

When I power up my Mac-Pro I only get a flashing file folder with a ? inside the folder. I suspect my hard drive is maxed to capacity can anyone help me as to what I should do?

Whatever the problem is you no longer have a bootable system. You need to try reinstalling OS X.
Reinstall Snow Leopard without erasing the drive
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Hard drive is filling up on its own

Hi My main hard drive is filled its 2tb and the only thing on it are the applications.I had windows installed with parelles. but the operating system is gone. I cant figure out how the hard drive is filling up. Help.

First, if you’re running Lion, select Apple menu > About This Mac > More Info… > Storage. Post a screenshot of the window, or transcribe what it shows.
Use a tool such as the one linked below to explore your volume and find out what's taking up a lot of space:
OmniDiskSweeper - Products - The Omni Group

Time Machine: external hard drive is filling up

I have a 750gb hard drive that Time Machine backs up on. It's been for going strong for over 2 years now. My hard drive is filling up, I only have 35gb left. Is it okay for me to delete many of the old backups dated from 2 years ago? I really only need to keep the last 6-12 months. Not sure how to handle this.

katlandsf wrote:
I have a 750gb hard drive that Time Machine backs up on. It's been for going strong for over 2 years now. My hard drive is filling up, I only have 35gb left. Is it okay for me to delete many of the old backups dated from 2 years ago? I really only need to keep the last 6-12 months. Not sure how to handle this.
You don't have to do anything.
When Time Machine is out of room, it will automatically delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones. If you have the +Notify after old backups are deleted+ box checked in Time Machine Preferences > Options, you'll see the message in the blue box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If you do want to manually delete some backups, you can do that, but only via Time Machine. See #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

My iMac's hard drive keeps filling up.

My iMac's hard drive keeps filling up. It has 320GB but only 1.37GB free! Other than Photos (3.43GB) and Songs (12.34GB), I have hardly anything installed on it. I recently got the message "Disc almost full...". Everytime I delete something (and I've delete a lot of things now) the free space relentlessly depletes. I have tried searching for files or programs that might be taking up a lot of space but can't find anything unusual or big enough to make a difference. I saw another comment from someone saying it was Mail failed downloads or something like that and suggested changing Finder preferences to "Other" to find the hidden files. But after doing this, I cannot find anything that looks bad. Look at the screenshot below, which shows what's taking up the disc space. How can the "Other" possibly be taking up 297.71GB when there's hardly anything on my mac that's bigger than 1GB!?!? Please help....

Do you own and backup any iDevices?
Anything else you have on this drive?
Any other places you store personal data?
You have any images or photos anywhere else?
You have a lot of documents?
Have you emptied OS X Trash icon recently.
iPhoto has its own trash the needs emptying.
Have you emptied the trash in Apple's Mail app?
Other things you can do to gain space.
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive older emails you want to save.
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Uninstall apps that you no longer use. If the app has a dedicated uninstaller, use it to completely uninstall the app. If the app has no uninstaller, then just drag it to the OS X Trash icon and empty the Trash.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
When you install and launch it, let it do its thing initially, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run all of the processes in the tabs. Let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.
Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects?
Good Luck!

My hard drive is filling up but I haven't added any new data.

My hard drive has filled up, taking up over a gig of available space, but I haven't added any new data. What's going on?

Check About This Mac from the Apple Menu, choose more info and then select the storage tab. If your Backup section is taking up a lot of space then your problem is most likely local snapshots from Time Machine. To delet local snapshots just turn Time Machine off and then back on.

I'm a beginner with iMovie and my hard drive is filling up fast. How do I move the event files from the hard drive to my time capsule?

I'm a beginner with iMovie and my hard drive is filling up fast. How do I move the event files from the hard drive to my time capsule?

you should never (ab)use a designated backup-setup for 'ordinairy' storage tasks.
plus, the wireless connection to TC is too slow for iMovie.
purchase any ext. usb-harddrive, 500Gigs starting at 50$ ...
you HAVE to follow advice given here:
http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c

Noticed my hard drive getting filled, didn't save 500 Gb of data on it. I made the observation that hidden files are been created on the Hd. I assumed they were unnecessary and deleted most of them. To my dismay am getting a kernel panic msg. what to do?

I noticed my hard drive getting filled, didn't save 500 Gb of data on it. I made the observation that hidden files are been created on the Hd. I assumed they were unnecessary and deleted most of them. To my dismay am getting a kernel panic message. How do i go about getting this fixed?

Depending on what directory or directories you were erasing from you've certainly erased important system files and perhaps important applications files as well. If you have been using TimeMachine to back your computer up you should reboot into recovery mode (restart and hold Command + R until you see the Apple icon) and perform a restore.
If you haven't, boot into recovery mode anyway and choose the install OS option. Keep your fingers crossed that the OS is the only thing you deleted and that this works. You may also find it necessary to reinstall some of your software.

Help please-Hard drive is filling up with iPhoto videos made in iMovie

Hello,
My 10 year old son has really taken a liking to home movie creation with this digital camera recording video clips. The regular digital camera that records video clips by default imports clips as .avi into iPhoto.
He then uses iMovie to find those clips in "iPhoto Videos" in iMovie. He then creates the movies and shares it to iTunes to put on his iPod Touch. Here lies the problem. He is filling up my hard drive! His user account iPhoto library is 65g and he does not have a tremendous amount of videos but when I reveal in finder to show the details of an iPhoto video it shows the folder (year and month) and I see other related folders that go along with this video. Although his videos are usually 5 minutes he speeds them up or slows them down with other effects and I think that is swelling the iPhoto Library with some of these folders being up to 2g each.
What is the best workflow?
I tried putting his entire iPhoto library on an external but when running iMovie some the the project lost links to the associated events. Don't forget these events right now are stored in iPhoto because it is from a digital camera, not a camcorder.
Option 1:
Is there a way to bypass the import of video into iPhoto? Each time the camera is connected it imports to iPhoto. If I got a card reader and we took the SD card out and then imported would iMovie take over or would iPhoto still import if video and stills are on same card?
Option 2:
Import normally to iPhoto, then manually drag video clips to separate folder and 'import' them into iMovie as separate events. BUT then we have to remember to go back into iPhoto and delete those videos. That would put the video into iMovie and store it there and not into iPhoto. What a lot of work?
Option 3:
Buy a small Kodak video web recorder and will iMovie take those in as videos?
I am assuming that storing these things in iPhoto, editing in iMovie, is creating this clutter. Please advise if this is the root of my problem. Why have these relatively short video clips consumed my iPhoto library? I think it is the effects, speed up movie ( he likes to make the voices sound like chipmunks and speed the songs up) that is creating addtional associated file in the iPhoto library.
I think it would be better to run independently in iMovie and not have all this associated with clips stored as iPhoto Videos?
I have 4 gigs left on my 250 gig HD.
ANY help would be appreciated!!!

I think I just fixed mine.
Go to keychain access and select the crlcache.db keychain. Right click and delete files and references.
Then click on keychain access -> Keychain First Aid and do a repair.
rinse lather repeat until the crlcache.db is gone from keychain.

My eMac is slowing down and my hard drive is filling up, what should I do?

I have a lot of music and movie files on my computer and just recenlty my computer has been slowing down. I only have 19 gb left on my 80gig hard drive. I don't know wether to buy more ram or get an external hard drive. I only have 256 mb of ram. Also as a side note my computer slows down drasticly when ever I run Limewire but it did not before. What is the reason for that and how can it be fixed. (note: I'm not a big limewire user and I only have 85 limewire songs compared to 2500 normal iTunes or Imported CD songs, so its not that limewire is the main thing i use for getting music, i just get random singles off of it) Why i does it basicly freeze my computer?
eMac Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.25 ghz and 256 ram

I posted this...
http://tinyurl.com/7eqxs
to the iDVD4 group, but it still probably applies to your situation. So first thing I would do is what my post says to do and see if that doesn't help your eMac with freezing and slow downs.
If you are going to keep the computer, then I would definately go with more RAM. You have two slots and only one is filled, so I would buy a 512MB module and throw it into the other slot and you should be all set for RAM. Even another 256MB module would be better than what you have now.
Also, get an external Firewire hard drive. Either buy one premade or put one together yourself (buy external case and internal drive to put in it). You can put together a 160+GB drive for under $100. This will allow you to free up a lot of space inside the eMac by putting seldom used stuff onto the external drive. Or if you want, you can move your iTunes library off onto the external.
Patrick

Thunderbolt external hard drives unexpectedly eject

Aloha, This is my first post to the community and I would greatly appreciate any help.
I run two thunderbolt external hard drives: 3 TB Seagate Backup Plus and a 2 TB LaCie lessee drive.
For several months, both drives will eject for no apparent reason. Recently, the 3 TB Seagate drive will only periodically mount. I can feel the drive spin and a light will go on, but it does not mount. This is a partitioned drive and on one partitions is a very large Aperture library, and being able to have access to these assets is becoming a concern.
Additionally, I have been able to get the Seagate drive to boot, but was only able to see one of its partitions. When I ran Disk Utility, the drive unexpectedly ejected.
Steps taken to address the issue
I have done numerous shutdowns to include unplugging the power cord from the computer, depressing the start button for 15 seconds, plugging in the power cord and waiting 30 seconds before powering up the machine, then plugging in the power cord to the hard drive, and then the thunderbolt cord to the computer, and have used two different thunderbolt cords, in addition to resetting system preferences and cleaning cachet's.
Computer:
27 inch iMac (three years old)
OS 10.9.5
3.4 GHz, Intel Core i7
16 GB 1333 MHz DDR 3
External Hard Drive
Vendor Name: Seagate
Device Name: GoFlex Desk Adapter Thunderbolt
Route String: 3
Firmware Version: 26.0
Port (Upstream):
Status: Device connected
Link Status: 0x2
Port Micro Firmware Version: 0.2.5
Cable Firmware Version: 0.1.22
Port:
Status: No device connected
Link Status: 0x7
Port Micro Firmware Version: 0.2.5
I am no expert: essentially I know enough to get into trouble. Might the issue be the iMac thunderbolt connection, given both drives sporadically eject? or might it be the thunderbolt connector that the drive sits in, given that I can occasionally get the drive to mount?
Any and all thoughts are greatly appreciated!
Mahalo nui loa (Thank you very much)

Aloha,
It was a long week. Here is an update.
Had the opportunity to go to the Apple Store yesterday and purchase new thunderbolt cables, and hooked everything up this morning.
I disconnected the Seagate drive from the sled, and brushed the contacts.
The Seagate hard drive did not boot on my iMac and Disk Utility could not see it. That said, when booted to my wife's iMac, Disk Utility could see the drive, but I could not verify or repair it. The data from my wife's iMac is attached.
Also, I tried to run Data Rescue 4. It would not see the drive. I do have Disk Warrior, if that is a reasonable option to try.
Additionally, the LaCie (now connected to my iMac with a new thunderbolt cable) has not yet been ejected. The computer has gone to sleep several times and I have awakened it.
I very much appreciate your thoughts and time, And I look forward to your thoughts, To include any experience in getting the data off of the Seagate. It contains seven years worth of photographs, which I would hate to lose. I also got the message about redundant backups. There may be some of the backup in Crash Plan.
Mahalo nui loa
WRL

I had to wipe my old hard drive unexpectedly, and have been trying to recover the bookmarks on my sync account on a fresh PC. How can I do this?

Same laptop, new hard drive. I know the bookmarks are out there on a cloud, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to put them back on a PC

Did you save the Sync key of that Sync account before you wiped that drive?
The Sync key is used to encrypt the data locally before it is send to the sync server and without that key your data is lost and can't be recovered.<br />
If you have the sync key then you can set up Sync to use the old account with your email address and password that was used to create it.<br />
If you lost your password then a new password can be send to your email address, but your sync key is not stored on the sync server, so can't be recovered.<br />
* https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Firefox+Sync+is+not+working
* https://services.mozilla.com/ Firefox Sync » Home

Aperture 3 - new external WD hard drive added -problems with capacity

NO SLEEP...
Just added new 3T WD hard drive per instructions (WD formatted to Mac already/checked ok) and called it Vault #5. All good here, BUT, when adding new Vault #5 into Aperture 3 by clicking "add new vault" it came up as Vault #5 fine, but it says "28.9GB of 1.8TB available" which is incorrect as I've added NO photos (yet). If I go to my desktop and click on the new Vault #5 icon and click "get info" it says I have 3TB available! Why does Vault #5 say "28.9GB of 1.8TB available" when 3TB is available? I need HELP!
I am REALLY stuck on this. I might point out I'm not the most computer savy person out there - PLEASE HELP!!!!!
I have an IMAC Mac OS X 10.6.8 (snow leapord)
THANK YOU!!!

Time Machine will only work on a volume formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you want to use that WD HDD on a PC as well, you will have to partition it and format one partition for Time Machine and the the other with a common format for Mac and a PC.
Fat32 has a 4 GB file size restriction. ExFAT does not.
Use these instructions to partition the HDD:
osxdaily.com/2011/04/26/partition-hard-drive-mac-os-x/
I am of the opinion that Time machine should have a HDD dedicated solely to it and you should have a separate HDD set up to work on the Mac and a PC. Take into consideration where and how you will back up the data on the PC//Mac volume/drive.
Ciao.

Hard drive suddenly fills up for no reason

For the last month or so my MBP has been going crazy. There is about 7 GB of free space on the drive, but out of the blue it will give me a "not enough free space/delete files" warning. The computer will show me with as little as 2 MB of free space. Repairing permissions and restarting helps sometimes, but what seems to work is putting something in the trash and emptying it. Then the free space is recalculated. Anyone have any idea what's going on here? Is this a logic board failure? A glitch in the system? Help!
My MacBook Pro is four years old, running the latest versions of all Apple software (and very little non-Apple software). Software update shows nothing available.

Thanks, turbostar. I tried that, but the problem is still there. I recovered only a few MB of drive space.
The only other thing I can think of is iBooks. I've read threads in that section of book sizes skyrocketing in the move from iTunes to iBooks. Could it be that the books I'm buying are taking up GB of space?? (Anyone know where they lurk on the hard drive now so I can check?)

My hard drive unexpectedly filled to capacity

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