Mavericks: Slow Finder/Full SDD Help

[lowercaseperson]

Hey all thanks for reading,

I have a 2012 rMBP 13" w/ 256 SSD - I've been running 10.9 since it came out and Finder has been really slow - I mean sometimes when I am trying to open a new Finder window I actually get up to get a drink, come back and still have to wait (Permissions and Disk appear to be fine). Anyway, this last month I was at an away site rotation for grad school and didn't have internet access at the apt. I was living in, and consequently used my phone a lot more than my computer. When I finally got home and started using the rMBP again I noticed I only had 4GB of space available on the SSD - when I left for my away site I had ~50-60GB of space. My User file currently only has 178GB of data on it. I can't figure out where all this extra data suddenly came from, what it is, or where it is! I'm wondering if it has anything to do with Mavericks and Finder being so slow and if anyone has a suggestion on how to find/get rid of all the extra data. I have been using Mac's since 1999 and am very conscientious when it comes to hard drive space - for the life of my I can't figure out what happened. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

do you have Time Machine turned on ?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[lowercaseperson]

Hi,

do you have Time Machine turned on ?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Bruno09 - thanks for the reply I didn't know that about Time Machine - unfortunately the report is showing no Backups on my local drive, but 127GB of "Other" -

 

[Bruno09]

See if this can help : https://discussions.apple.com/message/23457727#23457727

And : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6047

 

[Partron22]

Perhaps you system was suffering failure to connect to internet or similar all the time you had no access, and logging that failure to a file.
In terminal, try
du -h /var/log/system*
and also
du -h /var/log/

They'll give you the size of your various log files.
One may have gotten huge, and need killing.

 

[lowercaseperson]

See if this can help : https://discussions.apple.com/message/23457727#23457727

And : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6047

Bruno09 - that first link paid off (somewhat) in like 5 minutes I still need to investigate other stuff. But I backup my iPhone to my computer (bc iCloud was constantly saying I was out of space), but I have over 15GB of mobile back ups...that's seems excessive. Not sure which ones to delete though - a step in the right direction I think, but still doesn't explain the other ~40GB of extra data....

 

[lowercaseperson]

Perhaps you system was suffering failure to connect to internet or similar all the time you had no access, and logging that failure to a file.
In terminal, try
du -h /var/log/system*
and also
du -h /var/log/

They'll give you the size of your various log files.
One may have gotten huge, and need killing.

Parton22 - I have very limited experience with Terminal, that being said it doesn't look like I have any monster log files. What do you think?

 

[Weaselboy]

Bruno09 - that first link paid off (somewhat) in like 5 minutes I still need to investigate other stuff. But I backup my iPhone to my computer (bc iCloud was constantly saying I was out of space), but I have over 15GB of mobile back ups...that's seems excessive. Not sure which ones to delete though - a step in the right direction I think, but still doesn't explain the other ~40GB of extra data....

Don't delete those in Finder. Open iTunes and command-comma to open Preferences then look in the Devices tab and delete the backups for any devices you no longer own.

Open Terminal and paste in the command below then enter. You will be asked for your password. This will list all your base folders with size in GB next to each folder. Paste up the output here and we can help you sort through it.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

 

[Partron22]

Nope. I'm not seeing anything either, Those 'Permission denied' files might be hiding something though. I set my Mac to show invisible files and had a peek at the /private/var/log folder where they're located. On my mac those launchdaemon logs take up 332MB. The OS should limit the size of such private logs, so they're probably not the cause of your missing gigabytes.

 

[lowercaseperson]

Don't delete those in Finder. Open iTunes and command-comma to open Preferences then look in the Devices tab and delete the backups for any devices you no longer own.

Open Terminal and paste in the command below then enter. You will be asked for your password. This will list all your base folders with size in GB next to each folder. Paste up the output here and we can help you sort through it.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

So we fixed it. I have no idea what happened but I now have 60GB of free space. It must have been one of three things. 1.) I deleted 3 old backups in iTunes, 2.) I emptied my trash (which I do weekly...so IDK if that was it) 3.) I turned the computer off then restarted. HA! I have no idea what happened, here are the terminal readouts. Also Finder seems faster (not 100% sure though bc it seems to lag a really random times....however it is MUCH faster than it has been for the last few days). Thoughts? Could this really just be because I shut down the computer??

P.S. If it truly could be from just needing to restart my computer I'm really embarrassed - WOW

 

[Weaselboy]

So we fixed it. I have no idea what happened but I now have 60GB of free space. It must have been one of three things. 1.) I deleted 3 old backups in iTunes, 2.) I emptied my trash (which I do weekly...so IDK if that was it) 3.) I turned the computer off then restarted. HA! I have no idea what happened, here are the terminal readouts. Also Finder seems faster (not 100% sure though bc it seems to lag a really random times....however it is MUCH faster than it has been for the last few days). Thoughts? Could this really just be because I shut down the computer??

P.S. If it truly could be from just needing to restart my computer I'm really embarrassed - WOW

Looks like it all came out of the /Users folder with around 50GB difference between the two Terminal command runs. Those iOS backups you deleted can be fairly large, so that may be it. Trash would also show in the /Users folder.

A simple restart would not likely have anything to do with it.

 

[lowercaseperson]

Looks like it all came out of the /Users folder with around 50GB difference between the two Terminal command runs. Those iOS backups you deleted can be fairly large, so that may be it. Trash would also show in the /Users folder.

A simple restart would not likely have anything to do with it.

Strange....I rechecked my mobile sync backup file and it dropped from 15GB to 10GB so those files I deleted weren't the ~55GB I was looking for, unless they also deleted from somewhere else. I guess....I somehow had ~50GB of stuff in my trash?? I have no idea what it could have been tho! Also what was the difference maker in why Finder is now so much faster? I just don't get it.

I really do appreciate the help, I feel better having the space/Finder issue resolved, just really confused about what it could have been.

 

[Weaselboy]

Strange....I rechecked my mobile sync backup file and it dropped from 15GB to 10GB so those files I deleted weren't the ~55GB I was looking for, unless they also deleted from somewhere else. I guess....I somehow had ~50GB of stuff in my trash?? I have no idea what it could have been tho! Also what was the difference maker in why Finder is now so much faster? I just don't get it.

I really do appreciate the help, I feel better having the space/Finder issue resolved, just really confused about what it could have been.

Too late now... but this command would have shown your user folders space used and we maybe could have drilled down and figured it out.

Your overall slowness was very likely related to no free drive space (<4GB). That causes a lot of swapping around on the flash storage and really slows things down. If this happens again, post up here and we can try and pinpoint it.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

 

[lowercaseperson]

Too late now... but this command would have shown your user folders space used and we maybe could have drilled down and figured it out.

Your overall slowness was very likely related to no free drive space (<4GB). That causes a lot of swapping around on the flash storage and really slows things down. If this happens again, post up here and we can try and pinpoint it.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

Good to know! Will be back if it happens again