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DrumMoviePro

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 16, 2011
7
0
So, when I turn the AirPort on on my MacBook Pro you can see the hard drive space go down on the bottom of a finder window. When I turn AirPort off the the GB available on the hard drive stays the same. I'm not downloading anything. that I know of. Is some virus downloading in the background that I can't control? I did a full scan with VirusBarrier Express and it says that there are no infected files on the computer. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
When you turn Airport on, are you connecting to a network? If so, try connecting to a different network (Starbucks, etc) and also try turning it on and not connecting. See if you are getting different results.
 
How much MB or GB are we talking about?
Btw, surfing the net does consume HDD or SSD storage space, as there are temporary files stored on your computer.
Btw, regarding viruses:
The only anti-virus you need to protect your Mac is education and common sense.

You can also take a look at DiskInventory X, OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.



Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios
 
Well my computer was on all day. It started with about 220GB and went down to 200GB. and I have not created any new documents.
 
Last edited:
Time Machine

Is it possible to go back in time a few days with time machine and restore the whole hard drive? (not just one file.) I haven't created any important documents in the last few days and I think that might be a solution. or do you think the problem would still happen?
 
Is it possible to go back in time a few days with time machine and restore the whole hard drive? (not just one file.) I haven't created any important documents in the last few days and I think that might be a solution. or do you think the problem would still happen?
Yes, you can certainly do that. Only by trying it will you know if the problem recurs.
 
Is it possible to go back in time a few days with time machine and restore the whole hard drive? (not just one file.) I haven't created any important documents in the last few days and I think that might be a solution. or do you think the problem would still happen?

Before doing that, as it takes quite some time, why not scan your HDD for used storage space, as GGJstudios and I recommended? We even included links to some free applications to do that for you.
Maybe you could find the culprit that way, and it will be faster than reinstalling Mac OS X from a TM backup.
 
mail?

I ran Disk Inventory X and it shows that I have 37GB of stuff in my mail recovered messages folder. So I went to the folder in the finder and there are 666 recovered messages in the folder. All of them are the same email. This email had a picture attachment that was to large to sent so I just didn't send it. Is this just a massive mail issue? I posted some screenshots. I hope you can view them.

ScreenShots:
https://picasaweb.google.com/thomas123drum/MacMailError#
 
Mail issue?

Before doing that, as it takes quite some time, why not scan your HDD for used storage space, as GGJstudios and I recommended? We even included links to some free applications to do that for you.
Maybe you could find the culprit that way, and it will be faster than reinstalling Mac OS X from a TM backup.

I ran Disk Inventory X and it shows that I have 37GB of stuff in my mail recovered messages folder. So I went to the folder in the finder and there are 666 recovered messages in the folder. All of them are the same email. This email had a picture attachment that was to large to sent so I just didn't send it. Is this just a massive mail issue? I posted some screenshots. I hope you can view them.
So, before I had mail opened in the background and the HDD space was going down. Now I have mail closed with the airport on and the HHD is staying the same.

ScreenShots:
https://picasaweb.google.com/thomas1.../MacMailError#
 
I deleted the 667 recovered emails and it seems to be a little better but the amount of HDD space is still changing. it went from 246.28GB to 246.24 to 246.21 to 246.18 and back up to 246.21. There are no more recovered files in mail and I haven't created or deleted any documents.
 
I deleted the 667 recovered emails and it seems to be a little better but the amount of HDD space is still changing. it went from 246.28GB to 246.24 to 246.21 to 246.18 and back up to 246.21. There are no more recovered files in mail and I haven't created or deleted any documents.

There are still temporary files created by the system, which can accumulate to 40MB or even more. Why do you monitor those slight variances that closely?

If you are still worried, you could print your process list in Activity Monitor (select SHOW ALL PROCESSES and sort by Process Name) and attach it to your post and someone could point out a faulty process, if one exists.
 
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