Why is my hard drive suddenly full?

A truly amazing thing has happened. My iMac, which has about 700Gig of memory, suddenly announces it only has 3kb spare! (I discovered this when it refused to let me copy a photo from one file to another). It seems to be because the folder 'Library' is overloaded, but I can't find out which part of it. I have not used the computer for anything which might use up that kind of memory (or any kind of memory - I have iTunes but that only holds 6,000 songs). I am running Time Machine successfully (in itself a small miracle). Does anyone know how I can run diagnostics to find out which file is causing the problem - it certainly shouldn't be there. Thanks so much for reading this.

you probably have some runaway process that's eating up all the space. first, restart the computer. if the problem was with a runaway swap file it will go away. if not you can figure out what's taking all the space using 3rd party tools like [Whatsize|http://whatsize.en.softonic.com/mac], [Omindisksweeper|http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper>, [Disk Inventory X|http://www.derlien.com> or [Grandperspective|http://sourceforge.net/projects/grandperspectiv>. there is also a terminal method described on [this page|http://homepage.mac.com/francines/articles/TigerMisc.html].
you might want to start with the terminal method since it doesn't require installing anything.

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Hard drive suddenly full

The 320 gig harddrive says full. Were do you find what is making it full? Why did it fill up? I delete photos as I transfer them to external drives. I am a photographer.

Did you empty the trash? "Deleted" files stays on the hard drive until you empty the trash. Also, if you deleted the files from iPhoto, make sure you also emptied its trash.

Why does my hard drive suddenly fill to capacity?

MAC Pro running 10.7.5
2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon / 14 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM / 320 GB HD (Stock) + 3 1TB internal drives.
It doesn't matter if I'm even using the computer. The hard drive (320GB) goes from 13GB of free space to 150MB free space and sometimes 0MB of free space and then back to 5GB then 12GB.
I've look into the messages in the console window. I see this message repeated hundreds of times.
2/12/15 9:34:22.770 AM com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud: objc[369]: Object 0x7fff7291ffb0 of class __NSCFBoolean autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking - break on objc_autoreleaseNoPool() to debug
The same with this one:
2/12/15 8:25:57.351 AM com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0: Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
Any idea if these are connected to the hard drive filling up? How do I stop it?

Your OEM 320GB is old, slow, in need of upgrade, and too small!
13GB of free space to 150MB free space
A disk drive needs 10-15% free space to function, and a system boot drive should be more like 50%.
Adobe plugins will use 100GB for cache, in addition to scratch.
The price today for even 500GB (more than you need but heck at $199 they are fast and 1/10th what they cost 6 years ago)
Copy all the non-system folders to a data drive
Clone just the system to a new drive - $85 for 2TB Hitachi would be one idea or a WD Black
Might want to upgrade your 1TB drives over time, and replace one with a drive large enough for TimeMachine - 350% the capacity for all the drives and volumes and system you might need.
System drive should have 'ample' free space, no media or user data or graphic libraries, and keep the system to a minimum, the fewer processes the better in terms of stability and performance.
At this point I wonder what log is filling the drive, maybe printer or error messages, but that the drive's directory is no longer valid or integrity and even disk repair may not be enough.
Adobe has always done better with more RAM, 24-32GB "sweet spot" even along with scratch - and because disk saves are slow and single threaded, fast storage for projects.
A Samsung XP941 ($250 + $25 adapter for 256GB) writes at 900MB/sec and goes in PCIe slot, so about 2x faster than even SATA III along with seamless boot device in any Mac Pro. 500GB is 'nice' but $499, so could serve for system and scratch and plenty of free space.
FBDIMMs are not expensive if you choose to add more, 800MHz NEMIX FBDIMM on Amazon.

System memory vs disk usage -- why is my hard drive almost full if my system memory is half empty?

I have a white Macbook, 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 GB of memory, Mac OS X, version 10.5.8, purchased in 2008. My Mac keeps warning me that my startup disk is almost full, and indeed Activity Monitor shows that my disk usage has minimal free space (2.31 GB). However, the System Memory tab shows that half my space is free.
Does the discrepancy mean that there is lots of space left on my Mac? If not, how can I identify if some sort of error is filling up my memory? Right now, I have a lot of music and documents stored on my laptop, but nothing else, and I would like to be sure it's those two things that are filling up the space.
What is the recommended method for adding more memory to my Mac, if nothing else?

There are two different types of memory in your Mac. There is system memory, more commonly referred to as RAM, and there is disk space. RAM is where the Mac works on data. Disk space is where data is stored for long term storage.
You are in serious danger of causing your Mac to die completely by running it with so little free space on your system drive. It is imperative that you start either deleting or move data off the disk drive. You should have 8 to 10 time as much free space at least at all times for OS X to run will.
A tool that can with cleaning up your disk drive is OmniDiskSweeper. It will tell you the files and fol,der that are using the most space. That will give you good candidates for deletion or movement.
Allan

Why is my recovery drive almost full and how do i clean it.

Also why is my hard drive almost full when i have very little on the computer?

My recovery is full too exept ive got windows 7.... I do have a lot of crap on my laptop though.....i dont know whats causing it ... im 12 so all i do is take photos and videos , play games on hp games , watch netflix and youtube , go on kids chat....Well, there was this one time where i was on the chat when my computor was hacked and i just turned it off then it was fine if it helps..... i actually have no idea....ive had my laptop for about two years now ...my laptop is hp and part of the pavilion g series.....its red ?it has intel core....i dunno if any of this helps but please help ....My parents will get really mad if i run out of memery

Why is my new Mac telling me my hard drive is full? It says I have 100 gigs used and I should have another 400 gigs of storage left. What is up?

Why is my new Mac telling me my hard drive is full? It says I have 100 gigs used and I should have another 400 gigs of storage left. What is up?

Are you using FileVault perchance?
FileVault-protected Home shows less capacity than what's available on the hard disk...
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24068

Why is my hard drive full when I only have the operating system loaded and nothing else? No pics, music, nothing...It's the 60 Gig hard drive on the air built in late 2010.

Why is my hard drive full when I'm only running the operating system and nothing else is loaded? No music, pics, nothing! I understand the hard drive is small at 60 gig, but I can't believe the os would take up that much space.

First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB free on the startup volume for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. Use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved. 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 really see everything, you have to run it as root. Back up all data now. 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. After installing ODS in the Applications folder, drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
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.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. When you're done with it, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Why does my Mac say my hard drive is full, but that's not true?

Why does my Mac say my hard drive is full, but there should be plenty of space on it?

You need to get a program like OmniDiskSweeper, it will check your drive and see what is taking up the space. From there you can decide what to do.

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Mac

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?

Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan

MacBook Air saying hard drive is full when it's really not

I have just started getting error messages saying that my startup disk is full, saying I have "Zero KB" available, which makes sense being I have been doing a lot of downloading recently and have been learning Java programming (lots of Java and Class files), and the fact that 80GB isn't a lot of storage space these days (and hasn't been for at least the last 5 years), most notebooks these days have at least 200GB hard drives in them (that is one thing, that as much as I love Macs, has always irked me about them, very little storage space)
I have deleted over 30KB worth of unimportant files to free up some space (one file being 24KB alone), then opened a Finder window only to find out that it still says "Zero KB Available", if I delete 30+KB worth of files, shouldn't there be an equivalent amount of storage space afterwards? It doesn't make any sense that I would still be getting "Zero KB Available" after I deleted 30+KB worth of data
I am not sure if it's related, but for quite a while, I have noticed that my MacBook has been making a clicking noise, this has been happening for quite a while, though I have been hearing it less than before, and just recently I am now hearing what sounds like a screech coming from the MacBook (mostly when I put it on standby by closing the screen, right when the sleep mode initiates), though I have ignored it, being until now, I have not noticed any problems with the MacBook, no loss of data, no corruption, etc., and now the only problem I am experiencing is that it's saying my hard drive is 100% full even after deleting some files, though does fail when I try to verify the disk in Disk Utility
So is there a reasonable explanation for why it's saying my hard drive is full, or is it possible that there could be a potential disk failure?
Message was edited by: Mikedamirault2
Reason for edit: Paragraph Spacing

18tracks, a KB is small, Ill give you that, but the reply you typed alone, if copied to TextEdit and saved in TXT or RTF format should only be several bytes (under a KB), I have Java and Class files with plenty more text in it and they only range from 1KB to 8KBs, way below 30KB, though if I were to save this webpage as an HTML file, then yes, it would probably get close
Regardless, it doesn't matter how little I delete, even if I only delete one 1KB file, it should still say 1KB free, yes that is barely anything, but at least that means it would be accurate
My point, was I deleted 30+KBs worth of data (that is a rough estimate, I am not exactly sure how much I deleted) and Finder STILL said that I had "Zero KB" available, I don't know about you, but 30KB sure sounds like a HUGE difference than 0KB
To me, this means that it doesn't matter if I deleted 1KB, 1MB, or even 1GB worth, Finder would still say that "Zero KB" is available, and the OS will still refuse to save or manipulate files, to me, that's a sign that something much bigger is going on, and with the clicking and screeching going on (which may not necessarily be the hard drive, but you never know), and the fact that my hard drive failed a verification, something tells me my hard drive must not be in good shape, and could possibly be disastrous

HT201250 I want to use Time Machine to back up my pictures because my hard drive is full but I'm wondering if once I back up the pictures then delete them will time machine delete them off the back up too?

I want to use Time Machine to back up my pictures because my hard drive is full but I'm wondering if once I back up the pictures then delete them will time machine delete them off the back up too?

Evetually yes.
If your pictures have been in the same location (same folder, same subfolder, ...) for more than a week, then copies if them will remain in your TM backups until it fills up. They are then vulnerable to being deleted.
If they've been there for less than a week, TM could delete them as early as a month from now. If they've been there for only a few hours, chances are TM will delete them tomorrow.
This is why TM is not the best tool to use to archive data that you will be deleting from your main hard drive. Copy them to a dedicated external drive, or burn DVDs.

My hard drive is full, and it will not let me delete anything... :(

hello, so here is the story...
i bought my iMac about a little more than half year ago and i really like this mac. About 3 months ago, my computer started popping up me hard drive is full messages, and i did not really bother to delete any files. Because i have been using computers before this one, and i have never used up all the spaces before and the computer i have used before had even smaller hard drives. At the time i did not think it is going to effect my usage of this computer so i kept on using it. After about a month, while i was using my computer, it suddenly shut down and when i restart it my desktop is a plain blue background, with no wallpaper or any icons. Then i tried to delete some files, but when i try to do so, i can not even open up my applications or any kind of window. The only thing that i can open is safari, so right now i can only serve the internet, can not even watch any videos or movies online...
can anyone tell me how to delete files right now, because my hard drive is so limited right now, i can not even open up anything, so there is no way to delete any files

In all your use of computers, did you learn how to recover your backups and have a good backup strategy in place?
Or are you going to need help now on backups, recoverying files (already some good threads to just re-read), and rebuild your hard drive.
For starters you will need one or more external drives, and install OS X on one of them and use one or part of one for recovering files.
You should be able to free up space. Just go to your home account folder / library / caches and trash anything to do with Safari like Metadata cache folder to free up a little.
You don't need to "open" anything other than Finder. And you probably want to boot with SHIFT KEY at the least on startup - continue to hold shift key until you hit the desktop.
But you really should not or limit any use of this hard drive, and work from and boot from another hard drive for now.
Pick up some USB/FW drives:
http://www.macsales.com/firewire

Message that hard drive is full when clearly it is not!!!! HELP!!!

This is weird. Got a message that I had 117 mb left on hard drive. Dumped a bunch of programs and pictures. Then it said I had 25 gb on drive. Three days later, having done NOTHING, I got a message I was totally out of hard drive space again. Dumped a couple of programs - back up to 1.84 gb. An hour later it is full FULL AGAIN. I had done NOTHING. What is going on here??? My user folder says I have no space when I go to "get info" but when I check "get info" on all the folders inside (system, library, pictures, music, etc) it only adds up to half of the capacity of my hard drive (250 gbs). So in fact I know I only have less than 100 gb on that computer This is very strange. The drive is not full, and when I dump programs and data, it fills itself back up but can't find out why/how/where. I threw out the finder preferences but that didn't work. I booted up from my Leopard disk and it said my hard drive was full, but I KNOW it is not. What is going on??

Sounds like something is generating garbage. You've got a couple of options (at least) to track it down, starting with one tool built into the command-line interface. Pop open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Termain.app) and type in the following:
cd /
sudo du -hd 1
Enter your password when prompted. du is the Disk Usage command, which will print out the disk space taken up by each folder, including invisible ones. Note that du can take a fair bit of time to complete; my own drive took about 5-6 minutes with only 27GB on it, so yours will probably take longer.
Your other option is to grab Disk Inventory X, a freeware utility which performs a very similar job to du, but with a shiny user interface to help you locate the offending space waster. If you're not comfortable with the terminal, this may be the best place to start.

Why is my hard drive mostly backups?

Why is my hard drive full of backups?
Okay, my computer was running low on storage space, so I decided to clean it up. Now, my storage tab in "about this mac" looks like this:
What happened? Is there a secret folder somewhere where I can delete all these backups? I have a 2009 macbook pro that has seen better days, and I am currently running on OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1. My computer doesn't run well after it has less than 100gb of free space left. Can someone please help? I would get another mac, but I don't have the money. Thanks to anyone who can help!

http://pondini.org/TM/30.html

My hard drive is full even when I delete big files?

I got a notification telling me my hard drive was full. I had been downloading a lot lately so I knew it was going to happen. I then went through and deleted 34GB that I had in one of my folders. But even when I deleted and emptyed my trash my hard drive says it's still full. I showed hidden files but there aren't enough of those to be causing the issue.
I'm planning on getting an external hard drive to free up another 68BG or more of space but until I do I need to know why the 34GB that I deleted didnt free up space.

What version of the Mac OS is running on your MacBook?

Why is my hard drive suddenly full?

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