Shrinking HD space on startup disk.

Greetings.
I've been using final cut pro at work for quite a while now, but I've been having a problem I haven't been able to fix yet, and I'm even not 100% if it's final cut the culprit.
Basically seems that my space on the Macintosh HD drive keeps dissapearing. I'm constantly freeing up space, and something seems to be taking it and I get the "startup disk is almost full" message. Just today, for example, I got it, freed 6 gigs of space by copying some old videos to an external HD, went back home for lunch, came back 2 hours later, and it was filled again. A couple of weeks ago I managed to get over 20 gigs free, and since then it filled up again, and I have no clue what's taking it.
One thing I've noticed is that if I select the whole contents of the HD and click on more information, it tells me I have about 150 gigs of files... but the drive itself tells me I have over 230 gigs used, and the cicle keeps repeating, me deleting stuff, space filling back up.
This computer has final cut pro 5 open most of the time (what I use for work), with photoshop CS, After Effects 6.5 also most of the time (though much less frequently than FCP) and DVD Studio Pro sometimes.
I have FCP's scratch disk set to an external, and DVD Studio pro set to use the same drive than the project, so no idea what's being saved there. FCP's autosave is set on the startup drive, but every 20 mins and the files are so small that I doubt they might account to such a fast space consumption. The autosave folder is about 30 gigs in size now, but hasn't really grown up lately so can't be that either. Also once I found a log file (while searching for files over 1 gig) that was 12 gigs in size, but haven't found any other big one since then, and the folder it was on isn't even 100 megs in size after that, so I'm clueless.

Use Disk Inventory X to find out what is taking your free space. http://www.derlien.com/
It might be that a corrupted Log file is running amok and writing to itself repeatedly. Track it down and delete it. The first suspect would be that 12 GB file you mentioned. Log files are typically a few hundred Kb in size. It will not actually harm your system to delete all the log files. They just provide a useful record for when something goes wrong.
Why is your AutoSave folder at 30 GB? You only need those as a fall back in case you mess up the current working project. So long as you are saving your regular project file during and at the end of a session, you don't need the AutoSaves. Even less so those for projects that are long since finished.

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Does anyone know what to do to clear some space in startup disk?...Says there is now no more space available for application memory. How do I do this?

You will have to transfer to an external HDD and/or delete files from the internal HDD. I suggest that you use OmniDiskSweeper (free) which you can download from the Internet. It will show all of your files and the respective sizes.
DO. NOT FORGET TO EMPTY TRASH!
Ciao.

The space of startup disk continuously decrease

the space of startup disk continuously decrease, even i haven't saved any thing after every utilization of my macbook air(10.6.6). this problem appears recently. initial free space of my laptop is up to 16 G, but i find it decreases every time i start the computer.now only it rests 1.6G free space now.
i run 'tech tool protection', i found it is DIECTORYbackup took all spaces. but i duno how to delete these back up to release space

*Disconnect all peripherals from your computer.* Boot from your install disc & run _*Repair Disk*_ from the utility menu. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.
Select your language.
Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.
Select *Disk Utility.*
Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click *First Aid.*
Click _*Repair Disk.*_
Restart your computer when done.
*(Any errors that cannot be fixed, you will need a stronger utility - DiskWarrior or TechTool PRO)*
Repair permissions after you reach the desktop-http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751 and restart your computer.

HD space problem - startup disk shouldn't be full...

Hello everyone.
I'm having a really weird problem with my hard drive. All of a sudden, a message popped up saying that my Startup Disk was almost full, and the system profiler read it as having "zero k". This is extremely odd because I had about 19 Gb free just a moment before, and after checking folders, apps and documents there really shouldn't be a space problem. The first message came up right after importing a CD, but that shouldn't have caused this.
I tried deleting some items, but space increased only by that tiny amount. After a restart, the indicated hard drive space randomly jumped up to 1 Gb. When I woke it back up right now it was down to 200 Mb, and after another restart it's just come up to 650Mb. It just seems to fluctuate...
If anyone knows what the issue might be or what I could do about it, please help! Thanks,
silvia

Hi. Thanks for the tip, it was really helpful. Everything was as expected except for some log files in my Library. The sizes are mostly up to 100 K except for one huge 15.9 Gb file, called console.log.2 in a strange folder called 501
It's located in
Library > Logs > Console > 501 >
I'm really not sure what these files are and what they do, or what these folders are. Can I trash them or is that a problem?
Also, I've noticed that my hard drive space is actually continuously decreasing little by little... Do you think this is related?
Thanks,
silvia

HT3680 how to free up space if startup disk is full

How do I free up space when the startup disk is full?

O Trejo, greetings;
I am not the Wizard but a mere citizen of Oz who wears green tinted glasses as all others do.
DaisyDisk appears to perform a similar function as OmniDiskSweeper which I still prefer due probably due to my familiarity with it.
I am not familiar with OSX Server, so I am off the hook on this one. If you go to the OSX Server forum, there will be forum members who will be able to address your query. This is the link:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/servers_enterprise_software/os_x_server
If you are really nice to them, they may give you a Dog Yummy.
Ciao.

Insufficient space on startup disk for updates

Not sure how and what to delete. Have deleted a lot of pictures but can't think of much else to delete.

See this FAQ on freeing up space on your startup disk.

No space on startup disk? Problem with Mail?

Bought a new MacBook Pro Retina 15, 8mb ram. Recently when running Mail, it refuses to close when I quit the application. Worse, I get a window (screenshot attached) saying that I have no more space for running applications on my startup disk, even though just running Mail and Firefox. Any suggestions?

Your problem is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory.
That can happen for two reasons:
You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or
You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.
Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination.
In the Activity Monitor application, select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select
View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory
from the menu bar.
If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more memory over time without ever releasing it.
The process named "Safari Web Content" renders web pages for Safari and other applications. It uses a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed. Consider it a prime suspect.
If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.
The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:
sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total
where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details.

Space on startup disk

How do I remove items from my "startup" disk to free up space?

You should make sure the disc is not over 85% full. See this tip on how to do that*:
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
* Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Free space for startup disk

How much free space is recommended for the startup disk? I have a lot of movies and TV shows, I have them on ICloud.
Thx, Macmanuserid

If it's a boot hard drive and your interested in maintaining the computers maximum read/write performance, no more than the first 50% of the drive filled.
Meaning no files or anything on the second 50% of the boot hard drive, this can be done by creating a second partition in Disk Uitlity, provided there is ample room. If there isn't, then there is something there already and you have to reduce items so only 50% of the boot hard drive is filled, then do a defrag via my method here to shift the data up to the first 50% of the boot hard drive.
BootCamp: "This disc can not be partitioned/impossible to move files."
How to safely defrag a Mac's hard drive
You can still get decent performance from a boot hard drive until it's about 80% filled, however in later OS X versions there are a lot of large hidden caches like versions, timemachine local backups (laptops) and such that will unfortunatly push your newly created or transferred files to the more slower parts of the boot hard drive.
If you have a boot SSD then don't let it get more than 80% filled.
However other things can make a computer slow,
Why is my computer slow?

Help in getting making space for startup disk.

When I open up a user file on my Mac mini, nothing comes up except a background and the mouse arrow. I need to make more space on my startup disk by deleting files. I can't do that because the users won't open up properly.

Hi,
You can create Perfmon data collectors with proper perfmon counters related to CPU. Memory and Disk utilization. The data collector can be configured to store the data in SQL Server. This stored perfmon data can be queried from reporting service reports
to get a graphical representation. These reports can be subscribed so that the graphical reports can get mailed automatically at a specific time.
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What is my best solution for creating space on startup disk?

So, I'm a novice with Apple...novice in computers general actually.
I have about 58GB of music in iTunes and 85GB of photos in iPhoto- my two favorite things in life. I own a Time Capsule and it is set to do backups on my MacbookPro. My problem is that I have been getting "startup disk is almost full" notifications and have been trying to figure out how to create space without losing my data. How do I accomplish this? How do I know that Time Capsule has it if i delete it on my laptop and how do I get to it? I'm a little nervous to do anything but need the space.

Replace your hard drive with one that has a larger capacity.
Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

Running out of space on Startup Disk

I keep getting a message that I'm running out of space on my Startup Disk every time I try to do certain things with software on my Macbook Pro. it's a year old and shouldn't really be having this problem. Why might this be happening? What do I have to delete to keep it from happening again?

You may be better served by reposting in the MacBook Pro forums. You are in the one for older PowerBook G4s.
If you have the original MBP (Silver keys), the forum is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=250
If you have the "Unibody" (aka "Late 2008/early 2009") MBP, the forum is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=251

I keep getting error message "not enough space on startup disk" on my macbook 10.6, even though I've deleted and compressed many files. Could something else be the problem?

Somehow 1500 web pages were downloaded into my iphone app! That's when the trouble began Now, I keep gettig error message"not enough room on your start up disc. "So I deleted most of theml, but when I compress/delete files, it doesn't help. Now i'm unable to back up to a disc, because I get a similar message about lack of room.. I can't download apple updates or printer updates. My computer is almost unusable. When I took it to the Apple store they had no idea what was wrong.
I bought an external hard drive-Free Agent Go Flex which doesn't seen to function, and has no user interface and apparently little tech support. My cursor is all over the place. No one at Apple seems to be able to fix this computer. Any suggestions for my next move?
Thank you.

See Here for Troubleshooting
Free Disc Space
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
See Here for Resolving Startup Issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417

"Running Low on free space in Startup disk"?

I am trying to burn a DVD and after so long the message comes up saying i am running low on free space. I have checked my internal drive and amazed at what is being used.
Capacity: 55.77GB
Available: 1.44GB
54.36 Used on Disk.
Can anyone tell me how i can make free space and delete whatever is using all my memory? Its not being used in any of my programmes that i use, i.e. itunes, imovie etc.
Any help would be great. Thank you.
IBook G4, Powerbook 6.3 Mac OS Extended

First of all, it is dangerous to have that little free space. OS X needs some breathing room (about 5-10% of the HDD free).
The files could be anything, really. Music and Videos, including Garageband loops take up a ton of space. I would snag an external firewire drive and put some stuff on there.
Your problem is hard drive space, not memory, FYI. If you are running Tiger (10.4.x). Google and download "Tiger Cache Cleaner" (there is also a Panther version). Running it may free up some space, as will running Monolingual, which strips other languages from your machine.
Another thing you can check is your printer database. If you go to Macintosh HD--> Library--> Printers, you can delete any printer driveers you don't need. (Be careful with this, as it requires your admin. password...)
iSMH
Ps- the OS also takes up some space, as do 3-rd party applications.
Let me know how it goes.

Freeing up space on startup disk

I've started to get messages telling me that me that my start up disk is nearly full and that I need to start deleting files.
What is the safest and most effective way to do this?

Michael: Download Disk Inventory X or WhatSize. Each is a small utility that will show you clearly what files are taking up the most space on your hard drive.
The largest files on many people's hard drives are movies and videos. I don't have any of those on my Powerbook, so that's not an issue for me, but I do have a couple of dozen 250MB and larger photographic images and 8GB of miscellaneous smaller images that aren't in iPhoto Libraries. My eight iPhoto Libraries total about 10GB, and my iTunes Library is about 8GB. I keep disk images of two 700MB CDs on my hard drive so I can use the programs that require those CDs without having to carry the CDs around. The five largest of my 200+ applications range from 300MB to 900MB each, and I have 90MB of email saved for occasional reference. The ancillary files for iDVD take up nearly 2GB. My Classic System Folder and all my Classic applications take up 900MB. Your disk's contents may be quite different from mine — they are highly individual, of course.

Shrinking HD space on startup disk.

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