I have a macbook pro 2007 15" model. I am running snow leopard. I have been having hard drive issues lately. I have a 160gb internal hard drive and there are 8gb available. No matter how many files I add to the trash and empty securely it does not free up space on my hard drive. Any help?
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Emptying Securely Isn't Freeing HD space?
- Thread starter nethanger1
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I'm still a pretty inexperienced mac user, what is the difference between scanning the macintosh hd drive and the user drive?
what types of files are you deleting? to see how large a file is, click on its icon in the Finder once (so it's highlighted), and then go to File and click on Get Info (or hit command and i keys together).
if you are just deleting things like Word docs, you aren't going to make much of a dent...
when was the last time you restarted, by the way? restarting can get rid of some temporary files, some of which can grow rather large.
as to your question, the user "drive" is probably just your user (also called Home) folder. it's a folder that's on your hard drive. if you click on the Macintosh HD icon on the desktop, you should see some folders, like Applications and Users. if you click on Users you should open it up and see your username under a house icon. this is your user folder (user "drive"?)
if you are just deleting things like Word docs, you aren't going to make much of a dent...
when was the last time you restarted, by the way? restarting can get rid of some temporary files, some of which can grow rather large.
as to your question, the user "drive" is probably just your user (also called Home) folder. it's a folder that's on your hard drive. if you click on the Macintosh HD icon on the desktop, you should see some folders, like Applications and Users. if you click on Users you should open it up and see your username under a house icon. this is your user folder (user "drive"?)
Are you running Filevault on your home directory by any chance?
If you are, files deleted from your home directory will still take up space until you log out and the little reclaim diskspace process runs.
Does emptying the trash normall (non-securely) free up disk space?
If you are, files deleted from your home directory will still take up space until you log out and the little reclaim diskspace process runs.
Does emptying the trash normall (non-securely) free up disk space?
I have been deleting duplicate mp3 files that iTunes made and I have deleted numerous avi files. The total count has to be atleast 20gb. Securely emptying the trash has very little effect on free space (10 to 100mb). When I scanned my user folder it said it was 75.8gb. That sounds about accurate to what my used space should be, but when I get info for the user folder in finder it says capacity: 159.7gb Available: 8.36gb. And emptying non securely doesn't free space either.
keep in mind that there are many other folders on your hard drive besides your user folder, namely, the Applications, Library, and System folders. these also take up a fair bit of space.
are you sure you are getting info for the user folder? the only thing that should say "capacity" and "available" is when you Get-Info the actual hard drive (which holds your user folder plus the aforementioned folders). to get info of the user folder, make sure the house icon is highlighted by clicking once on it before trying to Get Info.
do you happen to have an external hard drive?
are you sure you are getting info for the user folder? the only thing that should say "capacity" and "available" is when you Get-Info the actual hard drive (which holds your user folder plus the aforementioned folders). to get info of the user folder, make sure the house icon is highlighted by clicking once on it before trying to Get Info.
do you happen to have an external hard drive?
I'd bet FileVault is the culprit here...
have you logged out or restarted as mentioned by myself and others? as iVoid said, you won't gain FileVault disk space back until you log out.
I don't know much about FileVault, but I think it decrypts your user folder when it's in use, and I'm not sure if it does away with the encrypted one temporarily, so the space discrepancy might be due to encrypted and decrypted user folders both taking up space... but try restarting or logging out first and see what happens
have you logged out or restarted as mentioned by myself and others? as iVoid said, you won't gain FileVault disk space back until you log out.
I don't know much about FileVault, but I think it decrypts your user folder when it's in use, and I'm not sure if it does away with the encrypted one temporarily, so the space discrepancy might be due to encrypted and decrypted user folders both taking up space... but try restarting or logging out first and see what happens
Alright, I am in the middle of emptying my trash right now. I have not restarted today. I tried turning filevault off and it said I needed 80 gb of free space.
Yeah, the first screnshot shows filevault is active on your home directory.
Filevault stores all your user directory files in a fiel calles a sparsebundle. This file will grow as you save new stuff to your user directory (including iTunes items).
It doesn't shrink until you log off and it performs a compaction (you should see a little dialog indicating this).
So once you log off and log back in, you should notice more space is available.
Filevault stores all your user directory files in a fiel calles a sparsebundle. This file will grow as you save new stuff to your user directory (including iTunes items).
It doesn't shrink until you log off and it performs a compaction (you should see a little dialog indicating this).
So once you log off and log back in, you should notice more space is available.
yeah, when you try to disable filevault, you need the size of your user folder in extra space, because it needs to hold both encrypted and decrypted images simultaneously, which you can't do in your current situation. but, restarting should do the trick.
Yeah, it'd need extra space to copy files out of the encrypted file as part of turning it off. Once everything is copied out, it would delete the old encrypted file when it restarts.
No reason to turn off Filevault. It doesn't take more space, it just doesn't release the deleted space right away.
alright. do you think if it does not do the trick, could an external hard drive be the 80gb of free space i need or does it need to be the startup drive?
correct me if I'm wrong, iVoid, but I would surmise that you could clone the internal drive onto an external that is >160GB. then boot from the external, and proceed to turn off filevault. then, clone the external back onto the internal.
regardless, why not try restarting now to see if you get back the space?
alright, so i just tried logging off/logging back in, restarting, and also shutting down and turning it back on and nothing worked. Could this issue possibly be viral?
I'm not sure what's going on, but it's not viral. there are no viruses for Mac OS X. when you deleted the duplicate iTunes files, did you move the actual files or just the references to them? how did you delete them? to find out if you're not sure, go to your user folder, then to Music, then to iTunes, then iTunes Music, and browse from there to check if the duplicates are there.
Ya, so all of my itunes music is in users/nethanger1/music/itunes. I looked through it all in the finder and deleted them using the command-delete key combination. I then securely emptied the files from the trash.
Your home directory is stored (encrypted) in that sparse bundle file. I don't think that's what you want.
The reason compaction probably isn't working is because, in doing your deletes, you're probably freeing up bits and pieces all over the sparse bundle. But you're not freeing a large enough single block that compaction can reclaim.
I don't think there's a better solution than backup+restore. There's some "how to defrag a sparse bundle" instructions here, but I wouldn't go near them without a good backup first... in which case why not just restore?
I have a program called drive genius. If you are familar with the program, are there any tools I can try to use to free up space that would not require me to backup my hard drive?