argh! rapidly losing HD!

[macOSX-tastic]

hi all.

my powerbook HD seems to be filling up awfully quickly. this morning i had 30GB remaining, and now i have only 28.13GB! where has that 2GB gone?

ive just been using my computer normally (web, iPhoto, itunes, adium, etc), and ive done a backup using carbon copy cloner.....but i'm still mystified by the missing bytes. how could i have lost almost 2G's????:(

is this a regular problem, and is there a solution? or maybe just reassurance?

thanks.

S

[generik]

Swap file.

No biggie.

[Gokhan]

what can be done to recover this used space ????

[macOSX-tastic]

as i said, i have no idea. i have nothing in the trash, and i suppose i could delete a few things, but nothing really big enough to make a difference without losing what i need to take around with me.

could you talk a bit more about this "swap file" thing? its new to me!

thanks

S

[rdowns]

Restart your computer and all should return to normal.

Swap file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swap_file)

[Nermal]

could you talk a bit more about this "swap file" thing? its new to me!

The simple (although not fully accurate) explanation: When you run out of RAM, the system starts using your hard drive as memory. The swap file is the "memory file".

[macOSX-tastic]

ah, fantastic, thanks all!

S

[clevin]

normally, a restart would recover the disk, but if you find the obvious disk space loss and restart doesn't solve the problem, try use OnyX to clean up your system. It happened to me last time, OnyX recovered 6GB disk space while restart didn't do a thing.