Suddenly the Start-Up Disk is filling on it's own...what?
PB 1 Ghz Ti OS 10.4.6 experienced user, HD partioned into section for startup containing system and apps, using CS2 a lot.
Just in the last 24 hours my start drive has started to fill up - almost 4 gigs - yet I can't find any obvious files, caches, or temp docs to blame. Plus it is totaly new behavior. This morning I trashed a gig of unused apps off it and after an hour of Photoshop and websurfing I got the "start-up is almost full" warning and on restart I only have 400 megs -- not the gig left.
Of course I have Photoshop's scratch set to different discs, and this is new behavior. I did just update to 10.4.6 but geez? It is a fricking mystery.
Any ideas? Before I reformat and reinstall clean... Thanks
Hi, Petronio, and welcome to Apple Discussions. You should have at least 5GB of free space on your startup partition at all times. The OS needs that space for its swapfiles. Without it, you will see anomalous behavior and unstable operation. Make sure your boot partition is large enough so you can always keep 5GB free on it.
It may even be that the less free space there is, the faster the OS fills the rest of it up. Then if you're forced to restart for lack of space, the OS may not be able to do its usual housekeeping before shutdown, which includes deleting no-longer-needed swapfiles. So after you restart, all that stuff is still taking up disk space. Caution: this paragraph is just guesswork on my part; I don't know it to be true.
In case it is, you should probably run the OS's regular daily, weekly and monthly maintenance tasks manually, use Disk Utility to Repair Disk and Repair Permissions, empty your browser caches, and run any housekeeping and maintenance functions that may be built into other applications you use regularly. These tasks should free up some space on your drive, and allow you to see whether or not you need to move or dispose of more stuff to reach the target of 5GB of free space.
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With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.
If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.
Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.
Have you emptied your iMac's Trash icon in the Dock?
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If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
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Basics of File Recovery
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Check out this article http://gigaom.com/apple/reset-os-x-password-without-an-os-x-cd/
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Given the specifications of your unit, iPhoto may be on a separate install DVD.
MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) - Technical Specifications
(as an example, not quite sure of your model)
What’s in the box
MacBook
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iLife ’08 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand)
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Mac OS X 10.5.5 and later: Installing optional and bundled software - Apple Support
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https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5872318?tstart=0
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