Why is my SSD filling up with phantom data?

Question

I have a 2007 Mac Pro (2,1) (waiting on the new one) running OSX Lion 10.7.5 with 9 Gb of RAM.
I installed an after market 240Gb SSD from OWC that I use as my boot drive.  It is about 85% full with 37.8Gb free space.  I've had the SSD and Lion installed for a long time without any problem, but in the last few days I have twice gotten a system message tell me that the boot drive is full and to close programs and delete data.  Using Get Info on the SSD, I have verified that it is full, with only about 240Mb of data free.  By the time I get this message everything is trashed and my only option is to force quit everything and restart the computer.  This has happened without any abnormal usage on my part.
After the re-boot, my SSD was back to normal with the same 37Gb of free space available.
I don't have Time Machine turned on.  I use SuperDuper for nightly local back up and BackBlaze for continuous offsite.
I called Other World Computing and asked if Trim may be an issue, I don't have it turned on in Lion.  They told me that shouldn't be a problem, that they don't recommend turning on Trim in the OS; that their drives compensate for that on their own.
Since the first time it happened, I've periodically looked at spare capacity via Get Info but have never found an odd increase.  But the last time, I was gone from the computer for an hour or two to find the 'memory full' message again displayed when I came back.
Can anyone offer any information as to what might be going on?  I can't think of any new software that I've installed lately or any changes that I've made in my computer work habits.  About the only thing that's new is that I updated iTunes to version 11.0.5.  Can't see how that would have had any effect on this.

Answer 1

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.
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 the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (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.