Disc filled up overnight

[SuzieLightning]

My disc on my Mac filled up overnight. I think I went from about 200GB of data to 1TB of data overnight...

Here's what I think happened: I downloaded a TV show last night using uTorrent. I checked it this morning and discovered there were now hundreds of shows downloading. I stopped the downloads and deleted all files and cleared out my trash. This took me down to about 750 MB, but still about 3X the size of what my HD was yesterday.

How can I go through and find out what's on my HD? I don't know how to search for file on a Mac like I can on Windows. I see that my person folder has 628GB (the remainder is probably my husband's), but I can't tell where the bulk of that 628 sits and I don't know how to quickly identify where it is.

Can someone help?

Kind regards,
Suzie

 

[satcomer]

You have a cache file going nuts. Download either Yasu or Onyx and run all the cache cleaning routines. This will reset those cache files (with the built in kernel command) to default, cleaning+resetting those files. Let the program reboot your Mac. Then IMHO upon the program rebooting your Mac, manually reboot again to completely rebuild your Startup/shutdown system cache.

Do IMHO this software maintenance once about every three to four months should keep your version of OS X running almost like new.

 

[SuzieLightning]

Thanks for the update. What is IMHO (I assume it is not "in my humble opinion)?

I will give this a try and see what happens!

 

[SuzieLightning]

Update:

I ran Yasu and it did its thing, including a reboot. I did a manual reboot, as well. I can't tell if it's resolved the cache issue or not; I do know that my HD availability has not changed. Should the available space open back up if Yasu was sucessful, or is there something else I need to run or do?

 

[EvenStranger]

I've used GrandPerspective to get an overhead snapshot of how much space my files are taking up. Borders of adjacent blocks represent the enclosing folder. The path to the file/directory should be listed at the bottom. You can use this to find the files, delete them and free up your space. If it is a log file gone berserk, you can delete it and it will be recreated, hopefully working normally again.

 

[AdrianK]

Thanks for the update. What is IMHO (I assume it is not "in my humble opinion)?

I will give this a try and see what happens!

It means 'in my honest opinion', so you were close

I've used GrandPerspective to get an overhead snapshot of how much space my files are taking up. Borders of adjacent blocks represent the enclosing folder. The path to the file/directory should be listed at the bottom. You can use this to find the files, delete them and free up your space. If it is a log file gone berserk, you can delete it and it will be recreated, hopefully working normally again.

Great advice. Daisy Disk will do this as well, it's a lot nicer and it will let you drag files straight in to the trash, but it is pricey.

 

[chown33]

Great advice. Daisy Disk will do this as well, it's a lot nicer and it will let you drag files straight in to the trash, but it is pricey.

GrandPerspective also lets you move files to the trash. It's the big red circle with a - in it. Or right-click for a contextual menu with "Delete file".