Hard Drive Space Missing on BOTH my HD's!

[Achtung_U2]

Hey everyone...

I apologize, I wasnt even sure as to what forum to post this in, since it is happening on BOTH of my hard drives, which of course, are hardware, I put it here. Im assuming its operating system software related though, not hardware, because of the mirrored problem on both drives, but I dont know... I would have thought a HD problem if it were just 1, but not both of them.

Anyhow, I am running OS 10.3.2

Today is the first day that I began backing up DVD's, as I finished each one, I trashed the files and emptied the trash. I hadnt even noticed, but as the day progressed... my free disk space on my main HD (which should be about 80G or so... is now down to 44G available. Missing around 40G!

There are definitely NO large files floating around on the drive. To make things more bizzare, I copied a 2.4G folder from my main drive to the 2nd HD. Then I trashed it and emptied the trash...

Now, the 2nd HD is also missing the 2.4G that was just there beforehand. Should have over 17G free, went down to 15G after the folder copy, which is fine....but after emptying the trash, its stayed exactly where it was before the folder went into the trash.


NOTE: Just now, about 5 minutes after writing this, I trashed another folder with video files (over 4G), and the available space never even changed at all.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what would cause this? And... how I might remedy it.

Please respond here or direct email if you can help me out.

Thank you! Mark ~

 

[tjwett]

you wouldn't happen to be running mlMac, would you?

 

[Achtung_U2]

Originally posted by tjwett
you wouldn't happen to be running mlMac, would you?

Im sorry, but I dont know what that means

Anyhow, I really should have posted in software, because this is Panther related....

i really hope someone knows whats doing this...

thanks again.

 

[BaDBoY]

ahhhhh... i know whats going on... i think..

but do you happen to have anythign NORTON installed? if you have NORTON file saver installed, everything you "trash" is automatically saved in this invisible folder in your hard drive. i think this folder is located on the first window of the drive. meaning the folder should be where the applications, main library, system folder is located. i think the folder is called trash cache. i had this problem before too. took me a while to diagnose it.

NOTE: it could be norton or any other system maintenance tools, like Pro tools or Drive 10.

 

[Achtung_U2]

hey badboy...

Yes I do have Norton installed, and have used the filesaver before to retrieve over 1400 messages in MAIL when I first got .Mac and lost all my saved Mail....

So, what you say makes sense, as today is the first day that Ive ever dealt with multiple 4 or 5G files at a time.

I will look into this tonite & update here with what I find. (as soon as MAD TV is over.... I need a break or I was gonna 'break' ya know it gets soooo frustrating. you gotta walk away for a bit.

Thanks again bro, really hope this is it. Mark ~

 

[michaelwarren89]

Have you simply tried relaunching the Finder, or even restarting? This is a minor niggle I've had since installing Panther on my Flat panel imac. After I move a file to/empty the trash, the HDD info would not change until I relaunched the finder or restarted, then the free space would increase to (or very close to) what I would expect. Even if you don't relaunch/restart the free space should be there and will gradually be updated as your hard drive reads/writes files back to the HDD over the top of the 'used space' and updates its info properly.

Hope this helps

 

[Achtung_U2]

Hey Michael...

yeah, I restarted about 5 times already.... no diff, so far anyhow

Also.... I have a program that reveals all hidden files on the drive and so far, I havent seen anything at all substantial. I mean, we're talkin 40G here.... all the hidden files I see are almost nothing in size, like 10k or whatever.

I'll keep trying things.... I hate to have to backup 50G reformat and reinstall everything.... thats gonna be a last resort for sure.