**My hard drive keeps filling up!?**

Mostly logs? That shouldn't be taking that much space. When it fills up again is it logs again?

mattmoore2008 said:

Yep! And when I say yep i mean heck yea!! im talking about 90-110 gb of logs....any idea why??

Click to expand...

Which logs ? Once you know that, or if you know the name of the log which I presume you do), google that and look for known problems.

mattmoore2008 said:

Yep! And when I say yep i mean heck yea!! im talking about 90-110 gb of logs....any idea why??

Click to expand...

Not yet, but is it one log specifically? What I mean, is it a log for a program like Adobe whatever, or is something to do with a Mac program? Any details might help.

mattmoore2008 said:

The logs differ in size and there are around 100 in all. but the 5 biggest ones vary between 25-20 gb per log. and they are all under "private>var>asl>logs"

Click to expand...

Here's your solution:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/641936/

You must have some issues with the process aslmanager taking up a lot of CPU in Activity Monitor and it's writing that log for asl (Apple System Log). Anyway, make SURE you read all the way thru the thread. I suspect the last post is most important. You also should look at the contents of the logs to see what's causing the logs to be created. BTW, I don't have an asl in my private/var directory (because my computers running fine, I guess).

Mac hard disk fills up on its own

Hi.
I have seen treads related to this problem elsewhere.
I have a similar issue - can anyone help!
I have an iMac running OSX 10.5.8
If I close down all applications and just leave the machine on (e.g. while out at work) - after several hours my hard disk will have filled up. Sometimes I get a message saying "Your Startup Disk is almost full".
If I then Restart the Mac - everything is back to normal and my disk space shows the correct amount.
But then it just starts filling up again!
This would not be so much of an issue, but my internet provider is starting to charge me as I am going over my monthly download allowance.
I have tried running various Utilities - but nothing has found whatever is filling up the disk.
Help please!

@ringers: First, state whether you even looked at my post above yours. Second, please state what is getting filled up. What logs, etc..

-aggie- said:

@ringers: First, state whether you even looked at my post above yours.

Click to expand...

Ooh, ooh, can I take a guess?

Aggie - well I did read it, but you are not dealing with a techie here - but someone relatively inexperienced in solving these kind of problems - and there were a couple of things that confused me.

Firstly, I ran the Terminal commands below as referenced from a link in the thread you referred in post 7:
sudo do launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.aslmanager
sudo mv /var/log/asl/* ~/Desktop/temp/
sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

I now have the temp folder on my desktop - which I presume I can delete?
The asl files within it all seem to be Photoshop related and there is one file called StoreData. I have not used Photoshop in some time, but all the files have today's or yesterday's date on them.

Since doing this I have kept an eye on the available disk space and it seems to have solved the problem - it's not going up on it's own anymore!

I also ran Disk Inventory X - and although I found the 'private' folder, it did not seem to contain all the files within 'log' as referenced by littlemcbeast at the start of the thread.

My private folder shows 823.5 MB, and within it (see Thumbnail).
var shows 821.0 MB; and within var I have
vm showing 512.0 MB
and db showing 236.5 MB
The log folder shows on 6.0 MB - and the only asl file in there is asl.db

So I didn't know what (if anything) I should be deleting?

Like I said - a novice here - so please excuse me if I don't get some of the more technical references right away.

Thanks

mattmoore2008 said:

Thanks guys for all the help, read the other thread and did what they said. one more question though, is it ok to delete most if not all of the logs? or will this mess anything up?

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Depends on what logs you are referring to. If they're hidden normally, you should leave them alone. The only logs you can clear (not delete) are the ones a program like Onyx or MainMenu takes care of. Rule of thumb: Leave hidden stuff alone, unless you REALLY know what you are doing. They're hidden for a reason. The ASL stuff was a hiccup, so that's why you can delete those logs.

ringers said:

Aggie - well I did read it, but you are not dealing with a techie here - but someone relatively inexperienced in solving these kind of problems - and there were a couple of things that confused me.

I was just asking to make sure, if you were irritated, since you didn't refer to anything about it.

Firstly, I ran the Terminal commands below as referenced from a link in the thread you referred in post 7:
sudo do launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.aslmanager
sudo mv /var/log/asl/* ~/Desktop/temp/
sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

I now have the temp folder on my desktop - which I presume I can delete? Yes, I think that was just in case the Terminal commands messed up something. So, you should be able to delete them, since the article didn't mention them further.
The asl files within it all seem to be Photoshop related and there is one file called StoreData. I have not used Photoshop in some time, but all the files have today's or yesterday's date on them. So, were the ASL logs taking all your space? Since it says something about PS, you might have to uninstall and reinstall. Hard to tell, but if the ASL starts causing a fillup again, I'd look into that.

Since doing this I have kept an eye on the available disk space and it seems to have solved the problem - it's not going up on it's own anymore!

I also ran Disk Inventory X - and although I found the 'private' folder, it did not seem to contain all the files within 'log' as referenced by littlemcbeast at the start of the thread.

My private folder shows 823.5 MB, and within it (see Thumbnail).
var shows 821.0 MB; and within var I have
vm showing 512.0 MB
and db showing 236.5 MB
The log folder shows on 6.0 MB - and the only asl file in there is asl.db

So I didn't know what (if anything) I should be deleting? Delete NOTHING else in the private folder!! Leave it alone. The vm folder is for swap files. Your space taken up by VM is MUCH smaller than mine, which leads me to believe you have a lot of RAM. I have 2 GB's.

Like I said - a novice here - so please excuse me if I don't get some of the more technical references right away. No problem. Everyone starts out new. Pay it forward.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Responses in red for clarity.

Aggie

Thanks for your help.
The Photoshop asl files now in the temp folder are all pretty small - 852 KB is the largest, and there are only about 15 of them - so it's not them that is filling up the disk space.

As I said, the disk space does not appear to be filling up on it's own anymore. But I should probably leave it for a few hours to see what happens.

So that's why I am still confused. I still can't figure out what is going on.
And I only have 1 GB RAM (yes, I am due for a new Mac!).

I will watch things over the next 24 hours and maybe get back to you if it starts happening again.

In the meantime - if anyone can tell my just why Safari takes forever to load pages - but that's another problem!

Thanks

Aggie

One more thing. I tried to empty the 'temp' folder from the trash, but it said 'The operation cannot be completed because the item "StoreData" is in use'.

So I'm not sure what StoreData is?

ringers said:

Aggie

One more thing. I tried to empty the 'temp' folder from the trash, but it said 'The operation cannot be completed because the item "StoreData" is in use'.

So I'm not sure what StoreData is?

Click to expand...

Reboot and see if you can delete it.

mattmoore2008 said:

So the logs that are titled such as "2009.10.12.UO.asl" , or any other log that ends in .asl...i can delete correct? i only ask this because if i dont delete them then they are still taking up over 100 GB of space

Click to expand...

You can delete the stuff that was put on the desktop. If you're talking about new logs, you'll need to explain, since the script you ran should have deleted those to the desktop.

FYI, if you can't delete that StoreData file, just put it back where it was or put it somewhere safe, just in case. It's probably small, anyway, correct?

mattmoore2008 said:

nope the desktop ones were the ones i was talking about thanks! after getting rid of all of that i went from 1.2 GB to 141 GB!!!! wowzers, thanks so much guys. hopefully this wont fill back up

Click to expand...

If it fills up again, you've got an issue with some software. Look at the logs and consider uninstalling and reinstalling the culprit.

Glad it worked for you.

The saga continues...

After trying everything contained in the various threads - my hard disk is still filling up on it's own. It downloads about half a MB per minute (turning Airport off stops it).

Still no idea where its coming from and thinking a disk erase and re-install may be the only answer. Is there any way to see where the data is being downloaded from?

ringers said:

The saga continues...

After trying everything contained in the various threads - my hard disk is still filling up on it's own. It downloads about half a MB per minute (turning Airport off stops it).

Still no idea where its coming from and thinking a disk erase and re-install may be the only answer. Is there any way to see where the data is being downloaded from?

Click to expand...

You need to read the logs and see what software is causing it. Then uninstall and reinstall that software.

The cause??

I think I have finally found out what is causing this ‘disk filling up’ issue – at least in my case.

Several months ago I un-installed Norton Anti-Virus (can’t think why I installed it in the first place!). I used Symantec’s own uninstall application downloaded from their website.

This problem can be traced back to that time.
I have checked through the Mac Console and every time I am connected to the internet, a file is constantly accessing and downloading.
Within Console the message is:
com.symantec.symdaemon[376] Fri Feb 19 06:45:58 Macintosh.local Symantec Daemon[376] <Error>: An error occured loading component SymConfidentialData.bundle (loadPlugIn failed)

I have traced this to an invisible file stored on the Mac HD called .SymAVppcFile – so obviously wanted to delete it.

This is proving easier said than done.
First I tried searching for the file through the Finder, with Invisible Items turned on. It found the file, but will not let me delete it.

I also tried WhatSize and OmniDiskSweeper.

In every case above, you can drag to the Trash, or delete, and the trash makes its usual sound – but nothing appears in the basket. And when you re-launch any of the above apps, the file is back where it started.

Finally I tried the rm command in the Terminal window. It says there is no such file!

I also tried opening the file in Text Edit, deleting it’s contents and re-saving it. But it won’t let me overwrite the file – saying I don’t have the access privileges. But in the Get Info window I have full read/write privileges.

Symantec have obviously encrypted this file somehow – don’t you just love them!

Any ideas on how to get rid of this file please?

I assume you used sudo in Terminal when you tried to delete it?

You might try going to the Symantec website to see if there any solutions to completely delete Norton on a Mac.