"Startup Disk Full" error when playing World of Warcraft

Whenever I play World of Warcraft for an hour or more, the "Your Startup disk is almost full" error pops up. I know this is not true and to prove it I have taken a screen shot (might be hard to read) with the error message above my finder window stating there is 396.74 GB free on my Macintosh HD. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
If it helps, the performance of World of Warcraft has decreased dramatically since 2/23/07. Before that the program ran flawlessly.

If you open System Preferences and then go to the Software Update pane, you can click on the Installed Updates tab to see when various updates were installed. Look in particular for the Mac OS X Update Combined 10.5.2 and the Leopard Graphics Update; when were they installed relative to 2/23.
Three things you can do as general trouble-shooting steps, if you haven't done them already.
Run Disk Utility. Use the Repair Disk Permissions routine under First Aid tab on your internal drive.
Restart from the Mac OS X installation disk. From the Installer's Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. Use the Repair Disk routine under First Aid on your internal drive. See if that reports any problem.
Reset PRAM. Some display parameters are stored in PRAM, so this may help.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Similar Messages

Startup Disk Full Error when it is not full.

When ever my swap files reach the size of the free space on my startup disk (60GB) I receive this error even though my swap files are stored on a separate disk with 500GB free. The startup disk continues to have 60GB free when this error occurs. The swap file disk has 440GB free. I know the program has a memory leak, but it should continue to run until the swap file disk is full. Please help!

If you open System Preferences and then go to the Software Update pane, you can click on the Installed Updates tab to see when various updates were installed. Look in particular for the Mac OS X Update Combined 10.5.2 and the Leopard Graphics Update; when were they installed relative to 2/23.
Three things you can do as general trouble-shooting steps, if you haven't done them already.
Run Disk Utility. Use the Repair Disk Permissions routine under First Aid tab on your internal drive.
Restart from the Mac OS X installation disk. From the Installer's Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. Use the Repair Disk routine under First Aid on your internal drive. See if that reports any problem.
Reset PRAM. Some display parameters are stored in PRAM, so this may help.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error?

What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error? I can't update software or use my MacAir at all.

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as "Backups." The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself.
To locate large files, you can use Spotlight. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Startup Disk Full Error - Please help

Dear ALL,
I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message.
I have no clue as to how to correctly fix this issue. I looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available, which I would have thought would have been ample space. I have started to remove unwanted files and backup to CD large image files. So this should free up some more space. The question is will this be enough to get rid of this issue and is it associated with the amount of HD space on my drive? or would I need to run some script etc? or download/buy some other product to fix this?
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Max

OK I tried Macaroni...and when I tried to work with a TIFF file I get the same Startup Disk is FULL message. The I get an adobe message saying Scratch Disk is FULL.
Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

Adobe Photoshop Scratch Disk Full/Startup Disk Full error - PLEASE HELP

Dear ALL,
I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message. Never happended before.
Since my initial post I downloaded Macaroni (utility) and have run the daily/weekly/monthly backups, checked the /private/var/vm and /private/var/log and /Volumes. Nothing unusual there...
When I started getting this error I had 32GB left on a looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available on a 152GB drive. Now after deleting I have 76GB capacity left.
But when I tried to open a Photoshop PSD or TIFF file and do a crop I still get tge Startup Disk is Full error followed by the Adobe Photoshop error Scratch Disk is Full.
I am thinking of running the Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and doing a Verify Disk and Verify Disk Permissions followed by Repair Disk Permissions. I will be logged into the machine whilst doing this. Is there any danger in this as I have read elsewhere that I need to do this from a bootable volume. If that is the case how do I create a bootable disk/cd? If not then what is the cure to my Disk Full as surely there is now nearly 50% FREE!!!!!
Please help.
Max

PS will always use the boot disk for scratch to some extent even with an alternate primary scratch disk.
Be sure to turn off Spotlight as it causes problems.
4GB of RAM would be nice, I understand small files don't work well if there is more than 4GB RAM but large files will. OS X uses free RAM as cache and RAM disk before using disk drives.
How much RAM is allocated to PS? More RAM would help.
A dedicated lean boot drive helps. Install just what is needed for your work, use a separate drive for data, and yet another RAID volume for scratch.
When in doubt, backup with SuperDuper, and do an erase and then restore. Always backup before repairing; and never, ever, use an old version of Tiger CD/DVD - like 10.4.2 on 10.4.7/.8. Use "fsck" instead, or your emergency boot drive.
Also, give Applejack a shot and delete the cache folders and swap files from time to time to keep a system humming. CS/CS2 and Tiger benefit nicely from more RAM.

Startup disk full error - boots normally but won't start finder

I'm having a problem in which my iMac when it boots gives me an error that the startup disk is full, but other than that it can boot normally and allow me to log in, but after that the startup stalls. I never get past the default "outer space" desktop image and finder never starts, so there's no icons, no dock, and nothing on the menu bar. What's weird is that Safari and Mail start and I can see them because I believe I have them starting automatically at boot. Safari works (I'm using it now to enter this discussion). Mail on the other hand starts but is hung checking for the servers for incoming mail.
I've tried to boot in safe mode (holding down Shift key at startup), but it doesn't work.
I've tried to boot in single user mode (holding down cmd-S at startup), but it doesn't work either.
I've tried to boot from Snow Leopard installation media (holding down C at startup), but it doesn't work as well.
Each time I try one of these alternate boot methods, it just takes me to the normal login screen with the startup disk full message. I click OK, login, and get stuck.
I'm just trying to get the finder started so that I can delete some files, but I just can't get that far. It's strange that the browser works perfectly and internet connection is fine, but nothing else works.
Thoughts? Thanks. - Mike

Hi Lina, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Safe Mode might allow you to boot and free up some space.
If you have access to another Mac and a FireWire cable, another option would be to use FireWire Target Disk Mode to transfer data to the other Mac and delete it on your MBA.
If either way works, you want to open up somewhere around 15% free space. Once you do that, run Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insert disc>restart>immediately hold down c key and keep holding it until you see “Preparing Installation”)>at first screen select the language and click Continue> click on the Utilities Menu in the menu bar>open Disk Utility>select your HD in the panel on the left side>click Repair Disk at bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until it says “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need a stronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyond repair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repair utilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself).
Ultimately, though, it sounds like you need a larger HD . . . .

Shutdown while startup, disk full error on verbose

i have a mac book pro when starting , the gray screen appears, later the apple and 10 seconds later aprox, turn off
i try verbose mode and after turn off i can see a message “Disk full error"
Operating system: OSX 10.9
322MB FREE OF 300GB .. (my girlfriend is a graphic designer and does not pay any attention to alerts ..)
I prove, smc reset, 2 chime sound test, safe mode (turn off too).
performing tests were:
1. Launch the recovery console ( from bootable usb osx mavericks) ,
a. i probe unmount the volume Macintosh HD, not possible, because, its in use.
a. verify disk ( Macintosh HD) , "the disk needs to be repair"
b . repair disk ( Macintosh HD) , Keys out of order , ... Utility cant repair disk , and restore your backed -up files
c . Check disk (320gb toshiba ..) , the partition map need to be repaired , because ... Problem with the EFI system partitions
d . repair disk (320gb toshiba ..) , but ... when repair , try with Recovery HD, and works fine (not Macintosh HD)
After that, the disc automatically unmounts and its not possible mount again (from terminal said "mount: /dev/disk0s2: unknow special file of file system")
2 . Probe I start with a recovery console (local disk)
same results (on repair 320gb toshiba.. the first time i run it, said "can’t perform live”, after that, same result like point 1
3. restart, with recovery console (local disk)
a. launch terminal and try to delete manually , go to /dev/disk0s2 (/Volumes/Macintosh HD) and can browse the disk (ex /Users/xxxx/Desktop), but when tried rm, appears “Read-Only File System"
4. Remove the HD from mac and put it on case, when i connect it via USB to another mac book pro, the OS, saids “can’t recognize the disk, initialize, ignore, eject)
it is possible unmount the volume and remount like read-write from recovery console?
is it possible to access the data in read-write mode for any way to delete some huge files?
its the only solution mount and external disk and make and tedious scp from Terminal???, if its possible
regards, sorry for my bad English
Dario

There are lots of hidden directories. There could be actual data instead of alias mount points under "/Volumes" which is often one reason.
There are a couple programs to show where space is going, as well as sort output from terminal, but I prefer OmniGroup OmniDiskSweeper - look on MacUpdate - to show and access files. Program works fine even though shareware.
And yes, you might want to use the Raptor? for something else and get even WD 640GB for $75, or the 3rd gen VelociRaptor 300GB $289.
There are threads in "Using Leopard" regularly about "where did my space go."

"startup disk full" error message

So, I get this error message saying "your startup disk is full: you need to make disk space available by deleting files" (or something along those lines). I went through my files, saved about 10 gigs of stuff to my external HD, then deleted it from my mac HD.
I keep getting this message, even after clearing up several gigs of space. When I boot up my computer, I have about 448mb of space on my HD, but it seems to disappear within a few minutes, even without any activity on my part.
Thanks.
-Erik

A Unix-based OS such as OS X requires hard drive space for log and cache files; this can take anywhere from 64MB to 2GB depending on how much RAM you have, how long since the cron maintenance tasks last ran, whether anyting is causing large write operations to the various logs, and so on. As a rule of thumb, you don't want an OS X Mac to drop below about 5GB free space, minimum; a oft-cited ballpark of keeping 10 to 15% of the hard drive free allows for user-created data and allows some safety margin.
If a Unix computer fully runs out of space, the computer can fail to start normally. You'd then face starting in single-user mode (hold the command and s keys down at startup), which puts you in a Unix command line interface. It's possible to use Unix commands to navigate around and search for unnecessary files to delete, but doing so if definitely non-trivial.
While written for Tiger, Francine: A Miscellany of Mystifying Tiger Problems has some useful tips you can try.
If you moved several GB to the Trash and tried to empty the Trash while the Mac's hard drive was nearly full, that effort may have unintentionally corrupted the disk directory. Boot from your OS X Install disc to launch Disk Utility from the Installer menu, and run Repair Disk on the hard drive (see Using Disk Utility and fsck). If repairs are reported, repeat Repair Disk until no problems are found. If DU is unable to repair the drive, DiskWarrior can often make directory repairs that DU cannot.

"Disk Full" error when disk is not full

I am starting to receive repeated situations where the OS reports that my disk is full, and any or all disks are also reported full...
I have emptied my trash, cleared all caches, deleted all logs, removed Apps I don't use (and their data in the Library's Application Support area), every language other than the various flavors of English, and I am still receiving this error.
I have 35 gigs of 148 free on my startup disk, 342 of 465 free on a secondary drive, and when I try Flash drives or drives from a mounted server they also are reported as full.
This sure looks like a OS X 10.4.11 (my OS version) bug to me...
Note, I have to use 10.4.11 because the OpenGL drivers on 10.5 are troublesome for my application development needs. (I write 3D graphics code on this machine.)
Any clues anyone?

How large in MB or GB is this 66 page document?
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-laptop.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
 Cheers, Tom

Startup Disk Full Error but disk shows only 20Gb on it!

I have a 150 Gb startup drive. I keep getting the error that the stratup drive is full and Get Info shows only 300Mb left on drive! Do get info on the 5 directories on the drive, Applications, Developer, Library, System, and Users and it all adds up to just over 20Gb. Am I missing something here? Ran Disk Utilities and the disk verifies ok and verified permissions and ok. I am running Time Machine but it backs up to an external firewire drive, not the startup disk.
I know that I can add another drive cheaply but I really want to know why this disk appears to be full. Any help? Thanks in advance!

There are lots of hidden directories. There could be actual data instead of alias mount points under "/Volumes" which is often one reason.
There are a couple programs to show where space is going, as well as sort output from terminal, but I prefer OmniGroup OmniDiskSweeper - look on MacUpdate - to show and access files. Program works fine even though shareware.
And yes, you might want to use the Raptor? for something else and get even WD 640GB for $75, or the 3rd gen VelociRaptor 300GB $289.
There are threads in "Using Leopard" regularly about "where did my space go."

Startup disk full error. HELP!

so i'm browsing throught the internet and i get a notification that my startup disk is full and it gives me a list of which applications I can quit. Slightly puzzled (because my desktop is relatively new and I'v only used about 1/3 of my total memory capacity) I quit some applications and continue browsing. I continue to get this error as i browse the internet but at that point it was at 2am in the morning and i had work the following day. I decided to put off the problem till the next day (today). After a good 3-4 hours of usage the same error message popped up! I decided to research it a little bit and I believe it has something to do with this:
unfortunately the people who i were following didn't go into detail about how to solve the problem. please help me out! thanks.

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 Activity Monitor, 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.
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:
Memory Usage Performance Guidelines: About the Virtual Memory System

Why do I get startup disk full error even though I have 2 gb free?

My startup disk is getting full (I get error message) after 1 day of usage.
In the finder, after a restart, it says I have 2.05 GB available.
Then after working for a while (yes, I keep a few apps open - usually Entourage, Word, Firefox, iTunes -- but c'mon, I have 1 GB of RAM) I get an error that my startup disk is full.
This is my Terminal Log after getting the error:
Processes: 68 total, 2 running, 66 sleeping... 241 threads 16:52:11
Load Avg: 0.92, 0.79, 0.71 CPU usage: 40.4% user, 8.4% sys, 51.1% idle
SharedLibs: num = 204, resident = 38.2M code, 5.36M data, 10.5M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 11633, resident = 436M + 11.8M private, 161M shared
PhysMem: 237M wired, 448M active, 268M inactive, 954M used, 69.9M free
VM: 11.3G + 138M 409448(1) pageins, 267438(0) pageouts
This is my Terminal Log after startup:
Processes: 59 total, 2 running, 57 sleeping... 165 threads 17:00:14
Load Avg: 0.31, 0.11, 0.04 CPU usage: 0.0% user, 2.8% sys, 97.2% idle
SharedLibs: num = 143, resident = 25.7M code, 4.27M data, 7.07M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 4731, resident = 56.3M + 13.4M private, 81.0M shared
PhysMem: 174M wired, 110M active, 139M inactive, 424M used, 599M free
VM: 6.67G + 104M 21081(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts
Any suggestions?

That isn't much hard drive space open. I have heard 10% should be free, so if you have an 80 GB drive you need 8 GB free; if you have 100, 10 free and so on. Even if the figure is 5% you are still too low.
Your error message said you had 267438 pageouts to the disk which seems huge. That means your physical RAM can't keep up and is sending out data to the hard disk which is virtual memory, not real RAM memory. I don't know enough about it to say for sure but that seems like a recipe for this kind of trouble.

Boot disk full error when 200GB free

Since I upgraded my Mac Pro to Mountain Lion, I am getting "Boot disk full" messages that demand that I force quit some programs. My boot disk is a 480GB SSD, of which 200+ GB are free. I also have 32 GB of memory, of which 16 are free.
Support claims that this might be related to the size of my home directory (over 100 GB). I moved downloads to another disk, and the frequency of this error has diminished, but it still happens.
Surely this is a bug! (Yes, I filed a bug report with no answer thus far...). Why should there be any limits on the size of home? If there are, what are they?
OS X should not be swappoing my programs out to disk with so much memory free. And yes, I run many programs at once--what is the point of a loaded Mac Pro if not to do this?

How large in MB or GB is this 66 page document?
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-laptop.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
 Cheers, Tom

LNK1106: invalid file or disk full error when attempting to link nidaqmx.lib

I am attempting to build the ContGen-ExtClk.c example file from the DAQmx ANSI C examples. I am using Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 (yes I know this is an old version). The file compiles with no errors; however, when I attempt to build an executable I get the following linker error:
--------------------Configuration: TestDaq2 - Win32 Debug--------------------
Linking...
C:\MSDEV\LIB\nidaqmx.lib : fatal error LNK1106: invalid file or disk full: cannot seek to 0x42d0f528
Error executing link.exe.
TestDaq2.exe - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
Am I using the correct version of the library file? I copied it from the C:\Program Files\National Instruments\NI-DAQ\DAQmx ANSI C Dev\lib\msvc folder.
Thanks,
Steve Reiling

Hi Steve,
There is another discussion forum that talks about using older versions of Visual C++. Please take a look at it and let me know if you have further questions.
Regards,
Hal L

Startup Disk full error message but free space shows 87GB

Hi I have looked through these forums as much as I could but can't find the answer to this. I was working in photoshop CS6 and received the message that my startup disk was almost full. I had just cleared files the day previous and had 87GB of free space. So I restarted after emptying trash etc and tried to get back into photoshop but had the same message, checked my free space and it said 2gb. So I began my search here and saw the issue with .OfflineCache in mail but was never able to locate that file on my computer and after trying several things and failing I checked the info on my Mac hd drive again and it was back to 87gb yet message still coming. I have 8 Gigs of Ram, a 321 Gb hard Drive and running a Mackbook pro 13" with Mac osx Lion 10.7.5. Mid 2010.
Please Help!!

Hi,
I would try using GrandPerspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net) to try find out where all the space is being taken up.
Chris

"Startup Disk Full" error when playing World of Warcraft

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