Mysterious Free Space Issue

Hello All,
Not sure if this is in the right forum or not - but I'm having an issue with my MDD Power Mac G4. I have 23 GB of free space on the drive my OS is located on - the drive is just under 70 GB in all. Recently I've been having issues with free space just dissappearing. All of a sudden, I'll only have 500 mb of free space on the drive. I reboot - all 23 GB are back.
The issue seems to happen when I first boot my computer up - example, last night i shut my tower off. This morning, booted up and started working. in less then 10 minutes time - my free space dropped from 23.2 gb to 625 mb. All I was doing was listening to itunes while i read the news on my laptop. I rebooted - and now all 23.2 gb are back...
Based on previous experiences - my system should now be fine until i shut it down again - even if thats days away.
Anyone have any ideas??

Thanks for the tip!
I'm not running any of those programs you mentioned - but am going to download whatsize and give that a try.
I uninstalled Intego's virus barrier today due to a seperate issue where the scanner would suck up 120% + of my processors out of nowhere. Perhaps the two issues are related somehow - only time will tell on that.

Similar Messages

Internal Hard Drive Free Space Issue

Hey,
I recently upgraded my 17" MacBook Pro from Tiger to Snow Leopard but the upgrade seems to have created a number of problems, the most notable being the lack of free space now available on my internal hard drive.
I also had to install a trial version of Aperture 3.0.3 in order to access my aperture library as the older version of Aperture is not compatible with Snow Leopard.
At this point the free space available on my internal hard drive was 36GB and my aperture library was 39GB. I had to uninstall Photoshop Elements 9 in order to create enough free space to open this library.
I bought an external hard drive and after some organising (importing and exporting to and from external hard drive), I eventually moved all photo files/folders, projects and libraries onto this external drive, leaving only one in-progress project (about 3GB) left on the internal volume.
I also exported my iTunes library and any other files to this external drive.
All trashes have been emptied.
The problem is that, despite all this clear-out, I now only have 2GB of free space on the internal hard drive.
I ran Disk Inventory X and it shows that my home folder is using 155GB of space, which seems ridiculous considering there is in effect nothing left on my laptop save for the application programs and the one remaining project.
I have manually checked through this folder and all its subfolders and have found nothing that would accumulate to this amount of space.
I have repaired an issue with the internal volume, but it is now showing a “minor” problem with the volume header.
If someone can provide and explanation/solution to this I would be very grateful as it is severely slowing my workflow at the moment.
Thanks

Baresi:
I suggest that you begin with Repair Disk
Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger) and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel, and report if it says anything but Verified)
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
If DU reports errors it cannot repair you will need to use a utility like Tech Tool Pro or Disk Warrior
I recommend that you make sure that you make a bootable clone of your entire volume using a utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
You should also seriously consider installing a larger capacity drive.
cornelius

Free space issue! Help!

Hello there, I am having a little bit of an issue with free space on my start-up disk. For some reason, the free space keeps going away day after day. Now, this is what we have done: Deleted files on desktop, deleted emails, deleted iTunes art-work, and we got rid of some songs on iTunes. As soon as we do any of those, we seem to lose free space. If anyone can help on this problem, that would be very grateful.
Thank you,
Greg

Hello! HERE is some info on freeing up disk space. I think your problem may lie in how you use your Mac. Panther 10.3.x runs its maintenance routines in the wee hours of the morning to rid itself of temp files that are created for instance when a disc is burned. If the machine is not left on all night it can't run them and you have to rely on a utility such as MacJanitor or Onyx to manually rid the system of temp files. Another problem occurs when the startup disk gets too full which will eventually bring the system down so it's important to keep at least 15% of free space at all times. HERE is MacJanitor and HERE is Onyx. I personally don't use a utility as I leave mine on 24/7/365. Tom

IPhone sync to iTunes library has free space issue

The iPhone “~’s iPhone” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the items in the iTunes library (additional 69.9 MB required).
I have 239 GB available on my MacBook Pro running OS 10.7.5 with iTunes11.1.2 and iPhone 4 running iOS 6.1.3 and the memory nearly full — 57.2 MB Available. This now happens over 50% of the time. These two issue might be related. If the error statement is misleading, that should be fixed.

OK, I deleted a bunch of pictures and it completed.
Instead of "The iPhone “~’s iPhone” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the items in the iTunes library (additional 69.9 MB required)," I think I'd have understood it effectively if it were "The iPhone “~’s iPhone” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to copy all of the items into the iTunes library (additional 69.9 MB required)." What a difference two words can make.
Who know how to get this across to Apple, Inc?

Hard drive free space issue

Hi everyone,
I'm facing a strange issue with my Macbook Pro late 2008. The hard drive space is not updated when I delete files and folders.
This started to appen after I installed Lion.
The free space at the bottom of a finder window is only updated once I force a restart of the Finder.
In the terminal however the command df -h keep indicating the same free space. It only changes after restart of the computer.
The amount of disk space sometimes quickly diminishes until I get the message "Hard drive almost full" or "Hard drive full".
The last time I restarted the Spotlight index start to rebuild....
Please help...
P

For more details, here is what the df -h command returns:
Filesystem                          Size   Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk1                         297Gi 190Gi 107Gi    65%    /
devfs                              182Ki 182Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
map -hosts                           0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net
map auto_home                        0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home
localhost:/O4B7llbGvciH_AHIeQuhgD 297Gi 297Gi    0Bi   100%    /Volumes/MobileBackups
At the bottom of a Finder window it tells me that I have 145 Gb free...
It also indicates 145Gb free when I ask Info on my hard drive.

Free Space Issue on Shuffle

I cannot fill my shuffle to its capacity. The "used" bar says I have 128MB of free space left and 363 MB used for 88 songs. I used to be able to put over 110 songs on it, but lately, 128 MB is always kept free and unable to be written to.
1. Checked preferences and have it enabled for music only.
2. Restored the shuffle with current updater 1.1.2 (a few times)
Please advise and thanks in advance for any help.

OK... I think I figured this out. I just hope I didn't have to pay for a new shuffle because of it. I recently gave up and set up a service call. Unfortunately, the one I received as a replacement today did the exact same thing and prompted me to learn even more.
1. I re-read all of my shuffle materials to make sure I didn't bust my new one.
2. I followed the instructions in the owners manual and put my new shuffle in. It automatically updated the software on it (must have been an older model return).
3. It put the same dam* 88 songs on the shuffle that my old one had on it and called it a day. Pi$$ed me off bigtime.
4. I realized it was something I was doing or my ITunes was doing and not my dam* shuffle. Pi$$ed me off bigtime again.
5. I took a gander at the tutorial here http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/tutorial/ipgettingstartedt7.html and noticed that it suggested deselecting the "Replace all songs when autofilling" box if it stops filling your IPod and leaves open space behind. I thought I had it figured out here, did just that and nothing happened. Pi$$ed me off bigtime again.
6. I then saw this article here...http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60920 and noticed that different formats would take up a certain amount of space. Some kind of light bulb blew apart in my head...
7. After reviewing the songs that actually got transferred (the crazy 88) I noticed that the vast majority are ones that were purchased off of ITunes... not ripped from CDs. All of my purchased file was on the shuffle... some other songs made it but almost none of my music is at 128 kbps.
8. The problem was the higher than 128 kbps AAC format that all of my ripped songs were stored at. I had to choose the "convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC for this iPod" in the preferences menu, then select autofill to get the rest of my space to be used on the IPod.
So... ruled out the shuffle.... I just hope they don't charge me for this one after I follow through and send the old one in. It looks like I get hammered for the new one if my old one goes back in good shape. Bummer. I sure hope they show mercy there at Apple... it took me a few tutorials, lots of digging in the FAQs and some heavy time on these pages to figure it out. Too bad it was so easy... it is always the last place you look.
Good luck.
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

OCFS2 Free space issue

Hello,
I have an Oracle 11gR2 RAC on two Oracle Linux 5 nodes. For storage I use a couple of OCFS2 partitions.
I have deleted a database using dbca and also have deleted the remaining files from shared partitions. When I consulted the free space with df I was surprised to see that the partitions appear to have a lot of used space even that there are no files on them. I've seen a similar behavior on a gpfs partition on AIX. Even that the database was closed and deleted (and lsof doesn't return anything), and I don't see how some files could be still opened, I rebooted both nodes (complete shutdown and start after both were down).
Now I see this:
[root@node1 bin]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdf1 4.0G 283M 3.7G 8% /d01
/dev/sde1 2.0G 283M 1.7G 15% /d02
/dev/sdj1 1.0G 91M 934M 9% /d03
[root@node1 bin]# cd /d01
[root@node1 d01]# ls -a
[root@node1 d01]#
How is it possible to have used space on those partitions even if they are empty?
How can I do some space management on OCFS2 partitions?
[root@node1 d01]# modinfo ocfs2
filename: /lib/modules/2.6.32-300.27.1.el5uek/kernel/fs/ocfs2/ocfs2.ko
license: GPL
author: Oracle
version: 1.6.3
description: OCFS2 1.6.3
srcversion: B8AF3035CE0F00B763D188F
depends: ocfs2_stackglue,ocfs2_nodemanager
vermagic: 2.6.32-300.27.1.el5uek SMP mod_unload modversions
Thanks.

fsck.ocfs2 -f /dev/iscsi/openfiler:disk01/part1
mount /dev/iscsi/openfiler:disk01/part1 /d01
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdf1 4.0G *283M* 3.7G 8% /d01
It's the same.
Just to add, the partitions were formatted like this:
mkfs.ocfs2 -b 4K -C 32K -N 4 -L oracrsfiles /dev/iscsi/crs/part1
/etc/fstab:
/dev/iscsi/openfiler:disk01/part1 /d01 ocfs2 _netdev,datavolume,nointr 0 0

Erase free space issues?

I am using fully updated Yosemite on two iMacs, one office, one home, and recently began having this problem: When I use Disk Utility to erase free space, the window first says it is creating a temporary file and then very quickly starts the erase process with the progress bar. This takes hours, so I usually "fire it and forget it" — let it run overnight or when I will be away from my desk. Occasionally I'll stay at my desk or return after a while and note that the erasing seems to be progressing normally. When I find that the process is finished, I see a message to the effect that the erasing couldn't be completed because the program could not create a temporary file.
Has anyone else encountered this contradiction? Is it an erroneous error message or has the free space really not been erased? Thank you.

Erasing Free Space Will Definitely Help Me and My Situation. Plus I've deleted or transferred files to an External HD, a ton of files(About 75%). And still the hard drive is reading FULL. The Erase Free Space Option just isn't working for some odd reason. So Erase Free Space Is Definitely What I'm Looking For. Any think you can think of, why it's not working properly?? And thanks for you speedy response also.

HT3680 Erase Free Space Issues!!

When I Try To Erase Free Space On My HD, The Process Fails Repeatedly. With Any Option I Choose, Like 7 Pass, It Takes 2 Minutes For The Entire Process. And That's Obviously Wrong. I've Tried Almost Everything. And My Disk Is Reading FULL. It's Limiting Me Big Time. And Also Hindering Me From Upgrading To Mountain Lion. Anyone Out There, That Can Help Me With This Problem ASAP, Please??

Erasing Free Space Will Definitely Help Me and My Situation. Plus I've deleted or transferred files to an External HD, a ton of files(About 75%). And still the hard drive is reading FULL. The Erase Free Space Option just isn't working for some odd reason. So Erase Free Space Is Definitely What I'm Looking For. Any think you can think of, why it's not working properly?? And thanks for you speedy response also.

Hard drive free space issues..

Hope someone can help me with this weird problem..
Every time I boot my macbook the hard drive space is correct but if I add files to the hard drive the free space goes down. When I remove any files the free space does not change. I've tried relaunching finder many times no change. This has been happening since 10.5.4. I have found that the only way to remedy this is to reboot.
This is getting annoying as I don't reboot my macbook regularly. It spends most of its time in sleep mode..
Thanks.

Try:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X 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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) 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. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) 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.

Free space issue

I have a Nano 16GB with less than 2000 songs in my libary. When I try to sync it says my ipod is full. I think my settings are correct.

What does the iTunes summurary tell you is hogging up your space? Do you have any games (other than the 3 pre-installed), music videos or cam videos stored on your iPod?

Odd free space issue with USB stick

I'm wondering what may be the cause of this. I have a 2 GB USB stick that 10.6.3 tells me has 2.02 GB available, yet I get an insufficient space error when attempting to move a 831 KB file to the stick. Could there be hidden files mucking up how the OS reads the stick?

I couldn't guess the cause but why don't you try reformatting the stick?
-mj

DVR free space issues

My DVR is frequently incorrect with the amount of space it tells me I have available. One week I will have 26h of SD, and 7h of HD, and it will tell me that I'm 98% full. I know it's not true, so I have to unplug the box and plug is back in, then it will show the correct amount, about 70% full. I have to do this up to once a week, it effects the recording too, saying it is full when it isn't.

There's several complaints about this, but nobody bothered to respond with a solution.
i am assuming if you are reading this, you don't need a support group to share the pain
of the problem, you just want the answer to fix it.
here is how to fix the problem with a Verizon HD DVR by Motorola.
Turn on the TV
Pick up the Verizon Remote
press the button to access the DVR
scroll down to system information
note the amount of disc space available. in my case, it was 92% full, with three programs on the disc. :-(
exit
press menu
scroll down to settings
within settings, scroll down to system information.
with the system information screen displaying, enter the following numbers, and then press OK
4 8 8 3
exit menu, and unplug the set top box for 1 minute.
plug the box back in, and let it reboot.
turn it on.
press the DVR button, and scroll down to check your available disc space.
in my case, 92% full had turned to 3% full, without deleting any programs. :-)
name your firstborn child after me for taking the time to post this.... ;-)
randy

Free Space Issue - Please Help!

Hey guys,
As you can see by the pic above, the hard drive on my MacBook Pro is pretty much full, but I have no idea why? Audio, Movies, Photos & Apps all look legit, but what the **** is going on with Backups & Other and why is it taking up 42GB?!
Any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated! Thanks again in advance.

Hi Mike!
Is there a special reason, that you are still on 10.6.5 You should try to update to 10.6.8 (make a back up first).
There are some nice tools to see, which files are taking your place on your HD:
Disk Inventory X
GrandPerspective
WhatSize
for example. Do you repair regularly your permissions and empty the caches? Take a look for Onyx or Applejack.
marek

Not Enough Free Space on NetBoot Image Partition

Since the NetBoot server isn't all that popular, I'm going to explain how it works a bit before I get into my problem.
I assume everyone knows how it works on the client end. You choose an image and your Mac boots that image over the network. Quick, easy, painless. It's a cool system. So on the server/admin side…
Every version of OS X Server comes with it's own System Imaging Utility. So lets say you want to make a netboot image with some utilities on it. So you take an external hard drive. Make two partitions on it. On one partition, you set it up to be the netboot image. So you install all of the utilities you want installed. You configure all of the preferences just the way you want them. Set your background image, etc, etc. On the other image, you just do a quick clean plain installation of your OS. And you also install your OS X Server Admin tools (or in case of 10.8, the Server app). So once your image-to-be is configured, you boot the second partition, and run the imaging utility. This utility will turn your volume into a netboot image. A netboot image is basically just a folder with some .plists in it, a read-only disk image of your initial volume, and a kernel or two (10.5).
NetBoot images are read-only. So when you boot them, you can make as many changes as you want. But once you shut down, all changes are lost. Every time any mac boots a netboot image, it is booting the image exactly as it was when you made it. The changes you make are stored in shadow files on the server that you can periodically toss, since they are only used during the current active session. Once you reboot, the shadow files are useless.
So here is the problem: When you make a netboot image from a real volume, the utility only leaves a small amount of free space on the volume. Even though the disk image is read only, the amount of free space matters because that's still all you get to use. In other words, if the .dmg file in the netboot image i just made only has 900 MB of free space in the volume, then that's all I get for free space on any machine I boot off that image. Even though the image is read only, and all of the "free space" is actually being stored as shadow files on the server, that limit is still applied. And 900 MB is not very much free space. So you can boot a utilities volume and if a program eats up a lot of ram, that virtual memory can eat up what little free HD space you have, and suddenly your netboot image is not very functional.
Now being the clever fellow that I am, I came up with a solution to this problem last time around. I used the following command to resize the partition (and only the partition) of the .dmg file, inside the netboot image (netboot images are just folders).
hdiutil resize -size 60g -partitiononly NetBoot.dmg
This resized the volumes to 60 GB. But it was all blank space, so the .dmg file's size did not change. It would just mount as a read only volume with 40 GB of free space instead of a few hundred MB. This little trick worked very well. But it's not working any more. I can't figure out why. But every time I try to run this command on the .dmg file, I get an error very similar to the following:
hdiutil: resize request 125829120 is above maximum size 18005952 allowed.
hdiutil: resize: failed. Invalid argument (22)
I get this error while running 10.8, 10.7, or 10.6. I get this error whether I'm trying to resize an image containing 10.8, 10.7, 10.6, 10.5, 10.4 or 10.3. I get this error whether I convert the image to a read/write image first, or even a spare image first. I get this error whether the original hard drive that volumes were on, is partitioned as APM or GUID.
The "maximum size" listed in the error message is different for each image I try to resize. It's as if the tool is trying to fit the increase volume inside the existing free space of the image's volume. Which isn't what I'm trying to do at all.
I've been using netboot images filled with utilities for years now. And overall it works very very well. I started back when the first macbooks came out with no firewire. I quickly realized I needed a better solution than booting my Mac into firewire mode to repair other Macs. And then when I got into it, I realized I could host images of all different OS versions. So now I can plug my MBP into a client's network, and boot any Mac they have off of a utility volume of any version of Mac OS X needed, all the way down to 10.3, all at the same time. And I also have NetInstall volumes too that let me install OS X for all these versions as well. The only real quirk I've had over the years, is this 'free' space issue. In the past (before the last time I updated my images, where I used the command above to resize the partitions and solve the problem), what I've done when I've ran into a HD pinch while working, is to immediately start deleting apps I don't think I'm going to need, right off the netbooted Mac. This frees up space on the netboot volume and the system is happy. And again it's all read only, so I'm not actually making changes to the image itself. One real half assed solution I thought of was to set up all of my netboot volumes as having a 1 GB file in their trash and not emptying it before creating a netboot image from the volume. Then when this problem came up and the OS was running out of disk space, I could just empty the trash. I'm quite sure this little trick would have worked, but it's so half-assed. I'd much rather just have more free space on the mounted disk images.

But how did my command work so perfectly last time? Here's an image. On the left, the info window of the disk image inside my 10.7 Utilities netboot image. On the right, the info window for that disk image's mounted volume. The file is only 7 GB and the volume is a 30 GB volume with ~23 GB free. None of the free space of the volume is using up any actual disk space in the .dmg file. I did this once, there's got to be a way to reproduce this again?
Here's the same thing with my 10.6 Utilities netboot image. Also in case I'm not being clear, these netboot images these screen shots are of, are from the last time I updated my netboot images ~11 months ago. These are not my current batch that I'm trying to finalize.

Mysterious Free Space Issue

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