Hard drive space decreasing

[dudeman316]

I'm the owner of a Macbook Pro with 4 gig RAM and a 320gb harddrive.

However, I have noticed that the hard drive space is decreasing slightly for seemingly no reason. Case in point, today it went from 197.66gb to 197.50 whilst I was watching TV and just before it went down further for no reason whatsoever.
Although its not a big deal it does arouse my curiosity and annoy me. Is it just virtual memory that will eventually come back or something more sinister? If it continues for a long time the space lost will eventually add up.
Since I'm planning on soon buying an iMac these are the sorts of things I need to know.

I hope this isn't a stupid question.
Help is appreciated.
Thanks

 

[stridemat]

I imagine they are just temporary cache files. Make a note of the harddrive space available, reset and see if the number changes.

 

[dudeman316]

Sorry but what do you mean "reset". As in restart? because I've tried that thinking it was cache and sometimes the space increases and sometimes it stays the same

 

[stridemat]

Sorry but what do you mean "reset". As in restart? because I've tried that thinking it was cache and sometimes the space increases and sometimes it stays the same

Yes that is what I meant. Download and install Disk Inventory X. It shows in a graphical way what is taking up space on you Mac. The only thing you can do is monitor this.

 

[dudeman316]

Yes that is what I meant. Download and install Disk Inventory X. It shows in a graphical way what is taking up space on you Mac. The only thing you can do is monitor this.

Thanks for that. But the problem is since the space is decreasing by such small amounts the files are difficult to single out. Its not like I'm losing gigabytes every second.
More like a download a 3mb song and losing 20mb

 

[AdamRock]

delete all temp files. and then tell safari not to save caches, imo its a waste of space (ON A LAPTOP.)