Hard-drive free space decreased

[Senseotech]

My iBook's 30 GB HD had ~12 gigs of free space minutes ago. I had ripped a DVD to an external hard-drive using DVDBackup and DVD2OneX, and hadn't noticed a difference. I did a second one, and got an error at 96%, at which point I noticed my main HD's free space had decreased to 4.96 GB. I've looked in all the usual places, but haven't been able to find anything that could take that much space; I've even used used Onyx to clear various caches and still nothing.

[Vice]

Reboot, your Virtual Memory has grown taking all that space.

Sometimes my Virtual Memory takes up 6GB Crazy amount of space.

[Senseotech]

I restarted and still nothing changed.

[Rudy]

look in the temp folder, sounds like the dvd program crashes and left the files in there

[Senseotech]

And the temp folder is where? The app didn't crash, it just gave me an error.

[macman87]

You need this -

WhatSize

http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize

Find out whats hogging the space and delete it.

:)

[Senseotech]

Downloaded and ran it:Users folder is 6.22 GB (4.57 of which is music, the libabry folder in my user is 799 MB) System's Library folder is 3.46 GB, applications are 3.42 GB. I still can't see where the files are at that would fill about 8 gigs of space are.

Sorry about image size, but it was a last-minute addition and rushed shot:

Edited January 30, 2005 by 4g3nt_Smith

[Dom]

EDIT: My bad, i was wrong nvm :p

[Senseotech]

What kind of calculator do you have; it says at the bottom of the window that its 23 GB, most definately not 27. That still doesn't explain this near-instantaneous creation of about 8 gigs of random files.

[aristotle-dude]

Sounds like something went wrong and our applications did not clean up after themselves for some reason or your drive's filesystem might be corrupt.

Check your disk with disk utility.

Are running an administrator account? loaded up Terminal and cd to /tmp/YOURUSERNUMBER/TemporaryItems and see if there are any files there What size does not show any subfolders but there are some in there.

[Senseotech]

I've restarted, nad it now up to 5.12 Gb free. Adding everything (the use shown in WhatSize, the free space, and the current Virtual RAM being used) and it roughly equal 19 gigs. So, there are 8 gigabytes that have vanished from my hard-drive. I ran disk utility from the install DVD, and did both repair disc and repair permissions, and neither helped in any way.

[Senseotech]

I just tried terminal to look into the folder, but I never could (even with google's help) find out how to list files in a directory, so I navigated there with Finder, went one level up and did a "Get info" on the folder. ITs been over a minute, and it still says calculating, so I'm betting thats it. Is there any harm in just selecting the folder, and deleting the entire thing?

[Senseotech]

Deleted that folder, no change. Ran onyX again, but this time checked EVERYTHING under cleaning and maintainence tabs, yet again nothing.

[Senseotech]

Well, I'm going to try afew pieces of software I found to try to reclaim this lost 8 gigs, and if they don't work I'm just going to have to back up and reinstall :(

[Senseotech]

Ok, so I'm all out of options save for backing up and doing a clean wipe and install. Can anyone tell me where Mail's preferences (accounts to check, veiwing, etc.) and mailboxes are? Also, what are the best ways to go about backing up things like applications and their settings; is there something that can back up an app and all its dependencies (pref and config files)?

[Southern Patriot]

I just tried terminal to look into the folder, but I never could (even with google's help) find out how to list files in a directory

585381613[/snapback]

Uhhhh, "ls" lists the files, just as in every version of Unix or Linux (or just about any other OS for that matter, including the Amiga). Windows is the oddball with "dir".

[Spacedog]

Ok, so I'm all out of options save for backing up and doing a clean wipe and install.? Can anyone tell me where Mail's preferences (accounts to check, veiwing, etc.) and mailboxes are?? Also, what are the best ways to go about backing up things like applications and their settings; is there something that can back up an app and all its dependencies (pref and config files)?

585386701[/snapback]

You can use a wonderful little app called

iBackup : it does exactly what you need, plus it's free! It doesn't burn the backup to a cd/dvd, though, you have to do it manually, but I think it's a minor inconvenience for the price and what it offers...

[Senseotech]

Ah, I knew there had to be something like that. Thank you! And roadwarrior, it really doesn't help now, as I deleted the file and gained no space back. Sitting currently with 2.85 GB, but all the folders in the root of my HD only add up to 16.5 gigs. Just tried to make a DVD of my Apps folder (my Onetouch is FAT32 and OS X won't let me move the stuff over to it) but I don't have enough space to make a DVD, as my startup disc has less then a DVD's capacity.

Edited January 31, 2005 by 4g3nt_Smith

[Senseotech]

To save me time and the possibility of missing something, could I just copy all the stuff from the root of the drive and then copy it back after I reformat and re-install? The stuff only adds up to 16.42 GB, so I'm hoping my problem of "non-existant" files taking up massive space won't transfer over. That, or if someone would talk we through backing up stuff on a per-application basis over AIM or MSN, I'd be forever greatful.