10.7.4 disc usage nearly twice that of 10.7.3

[dave239]

I have been using OS 10.7.3 on a Mac Pro 2010 6-core with the OS installed on a 64 GB SSD. The disk usage was approx. 26Gb for OS, Applications and my User directory. (I keep all my main data on separate drives)

I have recently upgraded to 10.7.4 and disk usage on the system disk has increased to more than 48GB. This is the disk usage on the SSD without doing any other change whatsoever. The total size of all the visible folders is about 27GB.

I have searched for any explanation both on this forum and elsewhere and can not find any obvious reason.

Please can anyone offer any explanation.

Thankyou

 

[dave239]

I have made some progress but still have a basic question.

I have identified the difference in disk usage as the sleepimage file in private/var/vm. I didn't know of it's existence - otherwise I would have found discussion of sleep/hibernation in other threads. However having done a more thorough check I have found that the difference in disk usage is 24GB - which makes sense as I have 24GB of RAM - so it was just coincidence, in my case, that the disk usage appeared approx. doubled.

So I have one remaining question: Please can someone explain why this file has appeared in 10.7.4 when it was not there in 10.7.3. ?
- there has always been a swapfile (having checked in my archived clones of 10.7.3) but not the actual sleepimage.

As far as I can see I have exactly the same energy saving / sleep options in 10.7.4 as I had in 10.7.3, so I do not understand the difference in behaviour.

I am keen to save 24GB if I can, as it makes a significant impact on a 64GB SSD.

Any advice would be welcomed.
Thankyou