Star up disk warning

Please help. I do not understand how to clear up my full start up disk. A sign keeps flashing every so ofter - start up disk full. Please give a very simple answer to this question.I do not know what is and what is not important in the applications folder where I believe I am suppose to clean up the start up disk - even thought I can not find the start up disk.
Kay

Kay, welcome to Apple Discussions.
Your Mac needs adequate hard drive space to operate normally. How full can a drive be before it's too full? There is no hard and fast rule that says “X” amount or “%” of free drive space is needed. A low amount of RAM requires more drive space for Virtual Memory’s swap files.
What size hard drive do you have and how much free space? You can determine by clicking once on your hard drive icon, then under File select Get Info. The size of your hard drive is the Capacity amount and the free space is the Available amount.
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space are discussed in this link
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Where Did My Disk Space Go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/770243/site_id/ 1
 Cheers, Tom

Similar Messages

How can I clear star up disk - keep getting message that it is almost full

How can I clear star up disk - keep getting message that it is almost full

Move the videos and pictures stored on the device to your computer and create more room on the device.

Very Low Disk Warning

I recently received a Very Low Disk warning. I have seen this before on other macs when I perform a "Erase Free Space" operation on the Disk Utility. However, I was not doing that now. I appear to have about 45 gig of free space on my MacBook Pro. It appears that the warning came about 17 minutes after a Time Machine backup completed. Any ideas as to why this might pop up.
Here is my free space:
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 186Gi 140Gi 46Gi 76% /
devfs 108Ki 108Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
fdesc 1.0Ki 1.0Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home
/dev/disk1s3 931Gi 445Gi 487Gi 48% /Volumes/Backup1
Here is the last bunch of messages from my Console (All Messages):
2/11/09 8:20:02 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Copied 15611 files (17.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
2/11/09 8:20:13 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.25 GB requested (including padding), 486.50 GB available
2/11/09 8:20:48 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Copied 15800 files (5.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
2/11/09 8:20:57 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Starting post-backup thinning
2/11/09 8:22:13 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup1/Backups.backupdb/burns/2009-02-10-072449: 486.52 GB now available
2/11/09 8:22:46 AM iChatAgent[179] [SASL] Level 5: DIGEST-MD5 client step 2
2/11/09 8:23:32 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup1/Backups.backupdb/burns/2009-02-10-062810: 486.54 GB now available
2/11/09 8:23:32 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed
2/11/09 8:23:32 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[6621] Backup completed successfully.
2/11/09 8:40:27 AM KernelEventAgent[36] tid 00000000 received VQ_LOWDISK event (4)
2/11/09 8:40:27 AM KernelEventAgent[36] tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/', from '/dev/disk0s2', low disk
2/11/09 8:40:27 AM KernelEventAgent[36] tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s)
2/11/09 8:40:27 AM KernelEventAgent[36] tid 00000001 displaylowdiskwarning: generating warning for volume 'Macintosh HD'
2/11/09 8:40:57 AM KernelEventAgent[36] tid 00000001 displaylowdiskwarning: warning for volume 'Macintosh HD' removed
Thanks.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 9.4G 8.8G 152M 99% /
I would say that it's pretty low disk space.
Partitioning is a personal thing, it depends on how much you install. Some need only 5 GB, some need e.g. 40 GB.
Last edited by karol (2011-01-19 04:27:22)

Low disk warning

Hello, I recently was given a warning that / has only a low amount of space left, although my system less than half full.
Here is the current output of df -h:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 276K 9.8M 3% /dev
/dev/sda3 9.4G 8.8G 152M 99% /
shm 2.0G 140K 2.0G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2 92M 20M 68M 23% /boot
/dev/sda6 31G 3.0G 27G 11% /home
I basically followed the beginner's guide when partitioning. Is this a problem? Should I repartition some of /home's space onto / ?

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 9.4G 8.8G 152M 99% /
I would say that it's pretty low disk space.
Partitioning is a personal thing, it depends on how much you install. Some need only 5 GB, some need e.g. 40 GB.
Last edited by karol (2011-01-19 04:27:22)

Toggle low disk warning preference

While busy working I got a warning about free space on my startup disk. I'm so desensitized to warnings that I had barely read the dialog before I closed it. But as soon as I did this I realized I'd clicked a checkbox on the warning that would suppress future warnings.
This isn't what I wanted to do.
If I get close to the limit on my startup disk again, I want that same warning to come up again. But apparently now it won't, and I can't find any way to reverse what's been done. I looked in System Preferences, Finder preferences, Disk Utility, and various plists, but found nothing related to low disk warnings.
As for my disk space, I quickly discovered that it was just a video buffer I was saving to the startup disk by mistake. I've already fixed that, so my disk space is no longer an issue. I just want to have the dialog come back if I ever make a similar mistake again. Any ideas? TIA

Michael,
You are tempting fate, by waiting for a free space warning. This will inevitably result in poor performance and the the loss of your precious data. OS X needs at least 10-15% free space for the proper use of virtual memory.
I would recommend that you read Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk, and Tuning Mac OS X Performance by Dr. Smoke as the ultimate solution to your problem.
;~)

Disk warning?

Everytime I start my intel 2.4ghz imac up I get a warning message that the disk I have inserted is unreadable by this computer. I was on Panther, and also had a problem with iDVD themes not showing and a green screen in Photobooth. So I upgraded to leopard and now all is Ok with the applications but the warning message is still showing up.
Could this be an early warning that my HD is on the way out?
I ran the disk utility and it says all is OK.
I am now worried even though I back up all the time.
Than for any help
Dave in Ireland

Sorry for the confusion. The error message I get is " the disk you have inserted is unreadable" Choices are to ignore or continue. Press "continue" and it just loops. Press "ignore" and it goes away , leaving me with the normal desktop.
I do not have any disk in the drive
I have nothing connected to the mac
I do not have HD partitioned
I am worried as I got this warning before in Panther. I had problems in panther as well with iDVD and Photobooth. Following a suggestion I upgraded to Leopard 10.5 and the application problems went away BUT the Disk error message still comes up at startup. I am concerned that my HD is failing. Its only 14 months old.
Hope this helps
Thanks
Dave

"Moving a File on Disk" Warning--what does it mean?

When I move a file/photo from one folder to another existing folder within Lightroom 3.2 by dragging one or multiple photos from Grid view in the library module I see the below pop up warning.
If I create a subfolder and click on "Move selected photos to new subfolder" I do not see the below warning.
After moving the photo/file I am able to move it back (undo) to the original folder----so what issue is this warning reffering to?
Moving a File on Disk
This will cause the corresponding file on disk to be moved. If you proceed, neither this move nor any change you've made prior to this can be undone.

I believe this means it breaks the chain of "Ctrl-Z" reversals. Not only can't you use Ctrl-Z to return the files back to where you brought them, but you also lose any of the other changes you have made this session that you normally could have stepped back through using Ctrl-Z.
Jeff

LaCie Big Disk Warning signs... Should I ditch?

Hi all,
First, want to quickly apologize for not doing a thorough read of all the posts regarding LaCie drives - the problem is that there are so many of them. People apparently are having all kinds of LaCie nightmares, and it would take me forever to read through everything. So here's my issue.
I have 3 LaCie Big Disk Extremes (d2), in three flavors. One 500 G, one 600 G, and 1 TB, each daisy-chained via FW 800 to the FW800 port on my G5 (Dual 2.5 GHz). All three have - until now - been acting just fine, but I just captured a few full HDV tapes to the 1 TB and I have had playback issues that just don't seem to go away. I'll play a few seconds, even at random points of the video, and it will freeze with the spinning beach ball of death.
At first I thought it was software issue, so I reinstalled QT, trashed preferences in FCP, but it all kept coming back to the same problem.
Now, here's the weird thing - when I copy the same video from my 1 TB to one of my other LaCies (which are actually further down the daisychain), the video plays fine, with no stuttering or freezing.
Now reading all of the LaCie posts is freaking me out a tad - is this some kind of warning sign that my 1 TB drive is heading down a dark path?
Is there some way I can fix it by either wiping it or attempting to see about fixing hardware?
And finally, is daisychaining all of these drives on the same FW 800 bus recommended, or is there a better solution (that won't break the bank)?
Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks guys!
Dan
(P.S. Any suggestions on other drive brands? A client just bought a Western Digital MyBook 1 TB, and it seems to be working great, but I'm open to suggestions).

Yes it is true that people report lods of problems with Lacie drives and there are many reasons for that.
Even the power supply is considered dangerousely unreliable.
Another thing is that drives can fail indeed at some point. If you can play the footage from some of your other drives then the 1TB might have some issues (power supply or other is difficult to say). Best would be backing up your media and if you can then run Disk Warrior http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
Good and not massively expensive drives, should you want new ones, are G-tech and Caldigit (links below). You could RAID a few drives (RAID 0 for example for quicker workflow), however, choice depends on several factors: what format you will be working on in the future, if you want to upgrade to eSATA at some stage, etc. Use the search tool of the forum or google for hints:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5068643
Personally I would NOT go for WD. Not really designed for editing.
http://www.caldigit.com/
http://www.g-technology.com/

Star-up disk full!

I get a message that my start-up disk is almost full and that I need to delete some files. But where do I even begin when I need those files? I have the Cloud subscription and I back up my computer on an external hard-drive disk using time machine. Cna I simply delete all my music files and photos and reinstall them from my time machine? I don't have hardly any other stuff that might fill up my disk except Word documents.
Help?
MacBook Pro 15 inch, late 2008
OS X 10.8

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
See Lion's Storage Display.
You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
See Where did my Disk Space go?.
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.

Star up disk

hello, i have a mac pro 2,6 man with a 250gb start up disk, split 50/50 running mac osx and windows xp. it made some funny noises and didnt start up today, so i held my finger on the button until it restarted and it worked fine...i thought its a good time to consider a back up drive or something and i decided it was almost useless to have windows xp take up space on a drive becuase i dont use it as often as i thought i would...
my questions are...
1. i would benefit from a bigger start up disk, right? for example a 500gb.
2. how would i exactly benefit?
3. which drives do you suggest...Brands, model numbers. etc...
4. would i just throw the new drive into slot 4, use something like superduper to create a copy drive?
5. doing so, i would be able to pull out the "old start up disk" and work immediatly from the new startup drive, but with the performance benefits of a bigger drive?
6. i could then erase the old start up drive and have it as extra drive space or a possible external sata drive?
7. or even keep it as a emergeny back up incase my new drive fails? or even a drive with windows that i would be able call out from the shadows for windows only jobs?
8. is there a way to remove a hard drive icon from the desktop, i have always found it to be an eye sore to see the windows drive on my desktop...
ps- i have 2 500gb drives in slot 2 and 3 in a raid 0...i think its raid 0, they share space not backup...
mac pro 2,6 Mac OS X (10.4.10)

well i got a seagate baracude 500 gb drive...i placed it in slot 4 of the Macpro and i set up 1 partition, Mac os extended(journaled) and clicked partition...
then the mac made a funny scratching sound for 30 minutes or so and showed no signs of really doing anything...and when i my mouse is over the disk utility window i see the little round rainbow spinning thing...is there something wrong? to me it seems like the disk is not being initialized properly...
thanks for the help,
aaron

I have a mac air and it says my star up disk is full, now when I log in it just has a blank white lit screen and I cannot go further

After logging in, theres just a blank white backlit screen and I cannot go further. It also has been showing on the screen
that the startup disk is full. I already tried diagnostics and it says hardware is fine.

You will have to erase your drive because it has a corrupted directory resulting from allowing the drive to become full.
Install or Reinstall OS X from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard 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.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
      the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
           because it is three times faster than wireless.

Star-up disk Full; cannot start my 2008 iMac w/ 500 GB hard drive

Kept erasing empty files from my early 2008 Intel iMac(with 500 GB hard drive). Kept getitng message 'Strt-up disk almost full.'
Used Hard drive as start-up disk. Kept getting a file labeled (approx.) EFileS1...(didn't write it down). Tried once to totally erase
this file: Removed Garage Band by moving to trash and securely erasing; and other files( 1-3 Mb at most. Now, get message "Start-up disk Full" and I can't
log onwhen I enter name and PW, I get the screen saver; I don't get the dock or anything else. I tried to use a external hard drive, and I also tried using an external CD/DVD player (integrated one no longer works) to reload SnowLeopard (OS 10.6) with no response (I had upgraded to OS 10.6.8).
I'm now using a Nov 2008 MacBook (burned out screen with external monitor) to write this email).
I'm going to buy 2014 MacBook Pro 15in w/ retina display as my sole computer, but my iMac hard drive has documents I'd like to save-Then I plan to totally
erase its HD before discarding/donating.
All suggestions and help will be appreciated.
Snboshu

If you can get the 2008 started move large libraries such as your iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes libraries to an External HD. Once you have verified the libraries have been successfully moved then Trash the ones on the internal HD and empty the Trash. Once these operations have been done then use:
iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD

Star up disk full on Macbook Pro

I recently got a Pro and merged some files from my iMac onto it. I woke up the next day to turn on my laptop after letting the merging go through and now it says my start up disk is full and to empty it but after I click okay then the screen is completely grey and I can only see the mouse curser move around. How do I delete the files that I merged if my screen doesnt work?

http://www.macworld.com/article/1160887/targetdiskmodethunderbolt.html if you don't have built-in Firewire, but just have Thunderbolt.

Star Up Disk "full" problems...Which private/var files can I delete?

I have been having issues with my start up disk being full.
To the point where I could not copy to my clipboard as I had ZERO space left, programmes were shutting down etc.
I couldn't even delete the few pics I had as I couldn't open my Kodak software.
I have uploaded the photos now and deleted them, I have copied all the files I can to sticks, there is basically nothing I have added on the computer, yet I still have only under 700 MB of space on my HD.
I have downloaded and run Omni Disk...it is telling me I have 130GB of "private/var" files.
I know I cannot just go around deleting things, so need to know what I can and cant delete if possible?
I really need to sort this problem out!
I also need to know how to fix this problem from happening again - is this a log problem or what exactly?
Thanks for your help in advance!

Hi, Limeslice
just to make sure that there is not a dum mistake: did you empty the trash?.
Other:
Disk space consumers are typically large photo libraries, music and video files.
back them up, then delete them, and don't forget to empty the trash.
To find large directories :
open Terminal (under applications/utilities), then type "du -d 1 -h" (without quotation marks). this gives a list. for example, it says " 25G ./Pictures", it means that the Picture directory has 25 GB. you can then refine and ask for deeper levels, by typing "du -d 2 -h" or "du -d 3 -h".
Try to find out in this way. if this doesn't give you the correct hint, please, report back, there might be more complex problems.
Success, Thomas

"file not on the local disk" warning when it absolutely is

Using DreamweaverCC2014 for the first time. Working on an older MacPro running Yosemite.
I define a new site, specifying the directory in which my site's files are stored. The site has a single page, called index.htm, in the root directory, which has a link to a CSS stylesheet named "main.css" in a directory called "_css." The CSS file is contained within the directory, and appears in the Files tab of Dreamweaver as expected. The link to the stylesheet is properly formed on the index.htm page.
At the top left of the workspace, I see two buttons: one for "Source Code," which, when selected, displays the source code for the page I am working on. Next to it is a button that says "main.css," which SHOULD allow me to open up the CSS page and edit it. However, when I click this button, I get a caution icon, along with the message that says:
"'main.css' is not on the local disk."
Next to this is a link that says "Get," which I would assume, when clicked, would allow me to find and relink the stylesheet. However, such is not the case. Instead, I get an alert window that says:
"'main.css is not in a defined site"
When I look at the page in Live View, the styled sheet is not shown, rather just the unstyled sheet. Looking at it in a browser, however, does.
The code is correct; I have checked an re-checked it. The files are all in place and show up as expected in the Files panel. Any thoughts on why Dreamweaver thinks this CSS file doesn't exist?

As this issue was diminishing my confidence in using the software for a mission-critical project, I contacted Adobe technical support for assistance.
This is a known issue.
The problem has to do with DW getting "confused" if there is any other file in the site root disk that may have the same name. In my case, there was (I tend to name the CSS files for my sites with the terribly generic "main" designation). The rep suggested that I create an entirely new site root, put my file structure into that, and see if the problem resolves. I did two things:
First, I installed a completely new installation of DWCC2014 on my MacPro laptop. No existing site files of any kind on that machine. I then created a new site, using a copy of my original troublesome site's file structure. So, with the exception of the fact that this is on a machine that has no other sites or files, I am repeating the test using the exact same files and folder structure. When I click the Source Code button, I see the HTML source code. And when I click the CSS button...the CSS file displays as expected!
Next experiment...back to my desktop MacPro. I copy the files for the site onto a completely different hard drive from the one I was using in my earlier failed attempt to get this to work. Again, same files and structure, only difference is the physical location of the files on a different hard drive. HTML source code displays, and, when the CSS button is clicked, the CSS page also displays as expected. Problem solved!
So, I hope that my experience (and the solution) is helpful in the event others encounter this same issue. Again, this is a known issue at Adobe, so chances are good one of you out there will have this problem. The solution is to place your files in a completely new site root apart from any other that might have similar file names, so as not to "confuse" DW.

Star up disk warning

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for