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Hard Drive Shrinking!

X-Factor

X-Factor

macrumors member
Original poster
May 25, 2004
33
0
California
I've recently noticed that my available hard drive space keeps getting smaller and smaller. Now I even get warnings that my HD is full and that I need to make space. I don't know what's wrong:eek:. I don't have too many files on my HD, or at least stuff that's mine. I don't know if the system is loading thing on to itself or what. Does anyone have an idea what can be wrong? :confused:

P.S. I have an iBook G4, running Mac OS X 10.3.9. 40 GB drive. :apple:
 
Do you use Adobe Acrobat Reader? It's been known to cause 'issues' on Macs. A friend of mine opened it once for the first time, found his hard drive was filled up, and I traced it down to a ~50 gb file in his logs area.

Disk Inventory X is also good for finding large files.
 
You could try and see if a crash log is the culprit. Under your home folder: Library/Logs/CrashReporter. Do a get info of the CrashReporter folder and if it's obscenely large like several gigabytes large, trash the offending log. The logs re-generate so it'll be fine to remove.
 
I have the same problem and WhatSize reveals a "private/var/tmp file that is over 20GB. can I delete it? how? (WhatSize is freezing or doesn't seem able to move the tmp file (or even smaller files in it) to trash

FJ218700 said:
perhaps a run-away log file.

Use an app like WhatSize to peruse your file sizes
Click to expand...
 
Shrinking hard drive

danishgary said:
I have the same problem and WhatSize reveals a "private/var/tmp file that is over 20GB. can I delete it? how? (WhatSize is freezing or doesn't seem able to move the tmp file (or even smaller files in it) to trash
Click to expand...

Same problem here. Using WhatSize I found the huge folder in Private/VAR/LOG containing a file titled SystemLOG which is 25.5 GB in size. My question is, can the System Log be eliminated or will that cause a huge complication?

I've had success in eliminating other large logs in the ASL folder which helps maintain the hard drive size. This, however, is only temporary.
 
danishgary said:
I have the same problem and WhatSize reveals a "private/var/tmp file that is over 20GB. can I delete it? how? (WhatSize is freezing or doesn't seem able to move the tmp file (or even smaller files in it) to trash
Click to expand...

Yes, you can delete the large file but not directly in WhatSize. You have to double click on the folder that contains the huge file and when it's opened you can delete the file to the trash. It will require your administrator password, of course.
 
Weird... I just had the "shrinking hard drive" problem... I don't know what happened, my comp has been on for about a day or two, I've been using Firefox, browsing & trying lots of small freeware apps, when I suddenly got a message saying my Startup disk was almost full!

I quickly freed up about 10 gigs, and afterward I saw my "space available" at the bottom of my Finder shrinking rapidly, as I just sat and watched.

I rebooted and, No I still have 234 GB free... and now it's holding at that. weird...
 
I am also having a shrinking problem. I have reset my computer and the drive goes back up a bit then slowly shrinks again. Several days ago I had 10Gb remaining. I have not downloaded or saved 7gb worth of files yet my hard drive says it only has 2.89gb remaining now. As I sit here it just dropped again to 2.86 gb
 
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