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Boot Drive tripled in size over night

S

sboerup

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 8, 2009
421
14
My 2010 Mac Pro has been running smooth and performance is impressive. After my fresh install of OSX 10.6.4, and installing my apps, my boot drive was only using 19.5GB of space. This was verified in Disk Utility, and the numbers in the image below add up to the same amount.

Out of nowhere this morning I see that it is now taking up 60GB worth of space. I'm trying to find out where it went, and what is taking up all that space. I'm looking for an app that scans the drive and can show me files/folders where all the data is sitting. I did a quick "get info" on each of the folders on my boot drive and the following is what I get:

bootdrivesizes.png


Anyone have a recommended app, or know what might have gone on? No System Software updates, it might have gone to sleep but I doubt the sleep image is 40GB. Scratching my head here . . .
 
Hmm that really is odd, and you're saying that those pics are after you've noticed the tripled size? Yet they don't equal 60 gb... very weird.

Let us know if you figure out the problem.
 
Yes, the pics above are AFTER the additional 40GB has appeared . . . yet they still equal the amount it was previous.

No VMs, nothing out of the ordinary. At first I thought it was a sleep file, but it has gone to sleep previously.

Thanks for the link on GrandPerspective, I remember using an app extremely similar when on Windows, so this was exactly what I was looking for. Yet, GrandPerspective also says a total size of 19.5GB . . .

When I 'Get Info' on my boot disk, this is what I get (Disk Utility shows the same stats):

bootdiskusage.png


My drive is a 160GB Intel SSD. Previously it would say I had 140GB space left. It shows 85GB now because I just added a BootCamp Partition of 20GB for Win7. Nothing installed yet, I literally just did the bootcamp after this discussion started.
 
This is a screencap from GrandPerspective:

grandperspective1.png


What is this "miscellaneous used space"???
 
Miscellaneous used space: All used space that is not accounted for by the size of the scanned files. This includes the following:
  • Files that were not scanned, either because the scanned folder was not at the root of the volume, or the user did not have permissions to access all subfolders.
  • Files that are excluded by the filter (if any).
  • Disk space that is not accounted for because the Logical file size measure is used, which underestimates the space that files actually take up.
  • Low-level file system data, needed to store amongst others the folder hierarchy.
Click to expand...

I still think you should do the terminal command I suggested :p
 
jedijoe, how do I access the /var/log folder?

DoFoT9, yes it does, the largest file being Adobe Acrobat at a whopping 950mb. This is what it looks like (great app if you've never used it, helped me find about 10GB of obsolete large data files that I no longer needed on other drives but could never find). Here is my boot, color coded by Top Folder on the Boot Drive (apps being the largest portion, library, system, users):

grandperspective2.png
 
Vylen said:
I still think you should do the terminal command I suggested :p
Click to expand...

No offense, I needed to verify what the command does before doing said commands from a stranger on the internetz :D

Here is the report:
9.7G /Applications
du: /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/Users: Permission denied
2.6G /Library
0B /Network
du: /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default: Permission denied
du: /System/Library/User Template: Permission denied
2.3G /System
87M /Users
 
sboerup said:
No offense, I needed to verify what the command does before doing said commands from a stranger on the internetz :D

Here is the report:
9.7G /Applications
du: /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/Users: Permission denied
2.6G /Library
0B /Network
du: /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default: Permission denied
du: /System/Library/User Template: Permission denied
2.3G /System
87M /Users
Click to expand...

There should be a lot more folders than that :confused:
 
Vylen said:
There should be a lot more folders than that :confused:
Click to expand...

There were, just all different volumes, but this is everything that wasn't on a different /Volume/

Now that I understand this command, how do I get past the "permission denied", ie: root access search?
 
sboerup said:
There were, just all different volumes, but this is everything that wasn't on a different /Volume/

Now that I understand this command, how do I get past the "permission denied", ie: root access search?
Click to expand...

sudo du -sh /*

Runs the command as root.

You should have folders like /bin /etc /dev /usr /var ... you know... folders that let the system run... heh
 
OK, ran the command as root, nothing different . . .

One thought, since my home folder has been moved to a separate drive, is there a way that it is including data from the Home folder? Doesn't make sense that it would, but, just a though . . .
 
you have to have directories like /bin /usr /var or your computer would simply not boot..

Try this instead in Terminal
Code: 
for dir in /*; do sudo du -sh $dir; done
and
Code: 
for dir in /private/*; do sudo du -sh $dir; done
 
Maybe your filesystem is corrupt.. this can cause the usage to report incorrectly.

You can verify your root disk in Disk Utility, but if there are errors, you have to repair it from a boot cd or another boot from disk....
 
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