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Free Space Error: OS? SSD? MBP?

thatoneguy82

thatoneguy82

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 23, 2008
1,895
2
Beach Cities, CA
So, I've had this problem for a while now. I have a Crucial m4 256GB SSD and it's about 8 months old. Problem is when I delete a large number of files at once or even one big file, the free space would be wrong. Disk Utility usually says something about "orphaned blocks" with a bunch of numbers. It's become almost routine now for me to boot into my Recovery drive every time I delete a lot of data since disk repair is only available there. I really don't know what's causing it. I turned on TRIM via TRIM Enabler and it still persists. Is this a OS problem? I've gone to Lion to ML with same problems. MBP? No idea, this is my first SSD. Or is my SSD faulty? I've tried the reformat thing once before and it still persisted. I emailed Crucial about this and they suggested a power cycle? Anyone know what this is or if it may have the potential to remedy my problem?

Any ideas?

Power Cycle Instructions from Crucial
Thank you for contacting Crucial.

In most cases, your SSD can be returned to normal operating condition by completing a power cycle. The process will take approximately one hour.

We recommend you perform this procedure on a desktop computer because it allows you to only connect the SATA power connection, which improves the odds of the power cycle being successful. However, a USB enclosure with an external power source will also work. Apple and Windows desktop users follow the same steps.

1. Once you have the drive connected and sitting idle, simply power on the computer and wait for 20 minutes. We recommend that you don't use the computer during this process.

2. Power the computer down and disconnect the drive for 30 seconds.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 at least one more time.

4. Reconnect the drive normally, and boot the computer to your operating system.

5. If the latest firmware has not been updated to your drive, do so. Go to http://*****crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx for our firmware updates.

A laptop computer will also work, but you’ll have connect the drive and navigate to the systems BIOS menu. (Please refer to your system manufacture’s documentation on how to access the BIOS.) Allowing the drive to sit in the BIOS will improve the odds that the power cycle will work. For laptops, we don’t recommended using a USB enclosure powered via USB. In addition, Apple users must hold the Option key while they power on the system (with the SSD installed). This will boot the Mac to the Startup Manager screen. The Startup Manager screen works like the BIOS screen on a laptop, in that it gives the drive power without any data throughput.

1. Laptop users will need to be in the BIOS menu, or Mac Startup Manager as stated above. The computer will need to stay powered for 20 minutes. We recommend you don’t use the laptop during this process.

2. Power the computer down and disconnect the drive for 30 seconds.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 one more time.

4. Reconnect the drive normally, and boot the computer to your operating system.

5. If the latest firmware is has not been updated to your drive, do so. Go to http://*****crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx for our firmware updates.

If you have further questions, please visit the Crucial Community at http://*****crucial.com/help. For sales questions, try our online chat service at http://*****crucial.com/company/contacts.aspx. Our hours are Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Mountain Time). At Crucial, we are committed to providing high-quality products and reliable service and support.
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sjinsjca

sjinsjca

macrumors 68020
Oct 30, 2008
2,238
555
I went searching for "SSD, orphan" here and found your post.

I've had the same problem, twice now. In my case the machine is a MBP Retina, December 2012, with Apple's 500GB SSD, fully updated OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3.

Symptoms are mainly gradual loss of free space. Today it reported I'd run out of space on my SSD. Doing cmd-I on my disk showed about 30GB free --not enough. Worse, Disk Utility showed only 14MB free!

I deleted some files, and the situation remained pretty much unchanged. I ran the disk-validation tool in Disk Utility and it found orphan blocks.

Those can't be repaired while booted on the same disk. So I booted into the Recovery Partition and ran Disk Utility there. (Note you have to unlock your disk if you're using FileVault 2, as I am, if you want the Recovery Partition's Disk Utility to do more than a cursory partition check.)

A few minutes later, everything had been repaired, and I had more than 100GB free!

So I'm happy, but wondering: why? Are blocks from deleted files not being reclaimed properly?


UPDATE: It's happened again. After just a few days since my above post, I checked my hard disk info and it was reporting <50GB free after a few days of usage, in which I created and deleted some large files (virtual machine snapshots, mostly). So I ran Disk Utility again and it reported orphan blocks. So I rebooted into the Recovery Partition, unlocked my disk and ran the Repair function. That corrected the situation, restoring my drive to ~100GB free space.... for now.

Since this keeps happening, I'll plan on making a trip to the Genius Bar about it. Could be some subtle hardware error, but seems more like an OS X bug.
 
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