Hardrive so full, Macbook won't start

[bennerd]

I have an 80GB HD on my macbook and it's currently 75 GB full.

My computer will start, but it keeps spinning and it's incredibly slow. So slow, that I can't actually delete anything from it.

I attempted to connect my Macbook to a Power Mac via firewire in target mode, which worked - but once I tried to access the Macbook HD - the Power Mac would begin to freeze up and act very slow.

Any ideas?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Yes. Simply being full is not your only problem. Your hard drive may be dying, or it may have corruption to the data catalog structure.

Either boot from the OSX CD or in Firewire target disk mode, and use Disk Utility to do a Repair Disk on the hard drive.

Then back up the data from your drive to the other Mac, and then start deleting things.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

yeah. that's not a full hard drive, that's a dying hard drive. I've successfully used a mac with 0kb free. it was hardly even slow... I'd try to save everything you can, then call Apple up.

 

[bennerd]

yeah. that's not a full hard drive, that's a dying hard drive. I've successfully used a mac with 0kb free. it was hardly even slow... I'd try to save everything you can, then call Apple up.

Not sure if this is true. I've been told and read that you need to leave at least 10% of your HD free - in my case that would be 8GB and only a little over 5GB are available.

If I boot from CD will I be able to delete anything? What about booting in safe mode?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Not sure if this is true. I've been told and read that you need to leave at least 10% of your HD free - in my case that would be 8GB and only a little over 5GB are available.

Hey, you want to disbelieve the people who have been there before and who are trying to help you, be my guest. I'm sure 'what you have read' covers your situation exactly... not.
10% is a guideline for good performance. It is not a brickwall that stops your machine from booting. And even then, it would not affect performance in Target Disk mode at all.

If I boot from CD will I be able to delete anything? What about booting in safe mode?

If you boot from the CD, you will not be able to access the Finder.

Do the Disk Utility Repair Disk first. See what it says. Check the SMART status. Backup your data.

 

[bennerd]

Do the Disk Utility Repair Disk first. See what it says. Check the SMART status. Backup your data.

I ran Disk Repair after booting off the CD.

It said there is an "invalid node structure" - upon trying to repair it, it tried repair "tree-B"

I googled this and found that a program called Disk Warrior should be able to repair it -

any ideas?

I did not see anything about SMART status, unfortunately

 

[KompleX]

I've successfully used a mac with 0kb free.

i've done the same, though not intentionally. i was recording a tv episode on an old pm 6500 using the apple video player software, and soon after hitting the record button, a massive video file took up whatever free space was left. after a few restarts, i was greeted w/ a very responsive system, but w/ zero free disk space.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Have you backed up your data yet?

You have a b0rked logical structure on the hard drive. DiskWarrior is one program that specializes in repairing certain kinds of these problems. Whether it will fix yours depends a lot on what its actual problem is.

 

[SFStateStudent]

Dude, I think you need to "BACK-UP YOUR DATA" as soon as possible ^^^^ or you're going to be sorry. Yes, you're hard drive is going BYE-BYE, so you want to save everything you have on it. But if you want to believe that it's slow b/c it's "full" that's OK too, just go out and buy a 500GB external hard drive to be safe, 'cause it sounds like you don't have one.

 

[XP Defector]

I was running with 400megs free last night. Sounds like your HD is faulty. Disk Warrior is your last hope I suspect.

 

[khunsanook]

Download the trial of Smart Utility here. The first 5 HDD tests are free with the trial version and it will tell you ALL you need to know about the state of your probably dying hard drive.

Good luck

 

[squeeks]

Not sure if this is true. I've been told and read that you need to leave at least 10% of your HD free - in my case that would be 8GB and only a little over 5GB are available.

so wait, i have to have 32gb free for OSX to work for me