Hardware specs and random "virus" question

[dsprimal]

Hello all, ive been a long time lurker, and a 1st time mac buyer of a new macbook pro core i7 =] i love this site with all the advise and information i get from it! (im new to the surfing engine on the site and i couldn't find exactly what i needed information on...at least for these 2 questions below)

Hardware question:
I have been to the apple logo on the top left and looked at "about this mac" etc. I have also found out where to see how much HD space i have left on my 500gb hd. But the specific question i have is, is there any way i can see detailed specs of the hard drive? i bought a 7200rpm hd and i want to make sure it is indeed a 7200 and not lets say a 5400 by mistake. (kinda paranoid since i cant seem to find "7200rpm" listed anywhere on this mbp.

Virus question:
I downloaded a folder of hi res wallpapers, and i later deleted them because they weren't what i was looking for.....as i tried to put the folder into the trash bin i got a message saying "cannot delete this folder because so and so .jpg is being used." so i 4 finger swipped down to see everything opened and that specific picture wasn't open.

But soon after, i gave it another try and the trash can was able to be emptied.

To be more specific, this is whats making me feel uneasy. I looked at my hard drive space availability and it keeps fluctuating, going up and down. before i downloaded the pictures, i had 16.87gb used, but after downloaded then deleted the pictures, i now have 16.89gb.....and at a random time i saw it go up to 17.2gb then it went back down to 16.89gb and stayed there....but never went fully down to 16.87gb again.

Could it be the picture that was "being used" when i tried to delete it? cause the folder is now deleted and i tried using the spotlight for any .jpg files and nothing came up. so im bugged out that it could be some type of virus or bug lurking within my system now which shows itself in the fluctuation of my HD space.

Thanks for all who took the time to read this, hope to hear from anyone soon

 

[GGJstudios]

First of all, there ARE no viruses that run on Mac OS X. The "file in use" message was probably because you still had Preview or another app open that had used the pics. Closing those apps "released" the files to be deleted. Your available HD space will fluctuate as you surf the web (cache) and as you open and close files, RAM paging, etc. Unless it changes dramatically, you have nothing to worry about.

As for your first question, About This Mac > More Info > Serial ATA will tell you exactly what model hard drive you have. From there, you can find the specs with Google.

 

[spinnerlys]

Hardware question:
I have been to the apple logo on the top left and looked at "about this mac" etc. I have also found out where to see how much HD space i have left on my 500gb hd. But the specific question i have is, is there any way i can see detailed specs of the hard drive? i bought a 7200rpm hd and i want to make sure it is indeed a 7200 and not lets say a 5400 by mistake. (kinda paranoid since i cant seem to find "7200rpm" listed anywhere on this mbp.

Applications / Utilities / System Profiler > Hardware > Serial ATA and select your HDD, look for the model number, right click on it and select to search for it via Google, which will tell you what exact specifications it has.

Virus question:
I downloaded a folder of hi res wallpapers, and i later deleted them because they weren't what i was looking for.....as i tried to put the folder into the trash bin i got a message saying "cannot delete this folder because so and so .jpg is being used." so i 4 finger swipped down to see everything opened and that specific picture wasn't open.

But soon after, i gave it another try and the trash can was able to be emptied.

To be more specific, this is whats making me feel uneasy. I looked at my hard drive space availability and it keeps fluctuating, going up and down. before i downloaded the pictures, i had 16.87gb used, but after downloaded then deleted the pictures, i now have 16.89gb.....and at a random time i saw it go up to 17.2gb then it went back down to 16.89gb and stayed there....but never went fully down to 16.87gb again.

Could it be the picture that was "being used" when i tried to delete it? cause the folder is now deleted and i tried using the spotlight for any .jpg files and nothing came up. so im bugged out that it could be some type of virus or bug lurking within my system now which shows itself in the fluctuation of my HD space.

As you implied, you lurked a while here, so maybe you have come upon one of those virus angst threads, which would have told you: THERE ARE NO VIRUSES FOR MAC OS X, are being in the present tense, for people, who confuse tenses.

What happened, is that you may have opened that image and even though you might have closed it, it was still being used somewhere.

Also HDD space availability fluctuates due to the swap files created by Mac OS X when it does need to swap contents from the RAM onto the HDD.

Maybe you have already seen and used this, but also have a look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in your future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to your system or your files.

 

[calderone]

Hardware:
When you go to "About this Mac" click the "More Info..." button which will open System Profiler. You can also open System Profiler from /Applications/Utilities. Then go to the Serial-ATA section.

Virus:

You don't have a virus. There are no viruses being distributed.

The jpg being used could have been caused by a number of things, but the likely answer is:
The Application that was used to open it didn't let go of the file. There are ways to find out exactly what is holding a file, but I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[notjustjay]

Modern operating systems are complex beasts. Dozens, if not hundreds of tasks are running in the background. When you click on a JPEG image, depending on what kind of Finder window you have open, it can be loaded into memory to provide a thumbnail preview.

You said you're new to Macs (welcome!) One of the subtler differences between the way Macs and Windows works is that on a Mac, closing the application window doesn't necessarily quit the app itself. So if you open your picture with Preview, for example, and then click the little red button to close the window, Preview is still running in the background, and may not have fully let go of the file resources yet.

Usually when you see the "file is still in use" message, if you quit all open apps and close all open Finder windows, it should resolve the issue. If not, try again after rebooting. If there's still an issue, then something in the background is genuinely keeping the file open, or you've got a permissions issue.

As for disk space, as others have said, those dozens of background processes can be doing all kinds of things with disk space -- swapping virtual memory, building the Spotlight index for your hard drive, writing log files, temporary files, and so on. A little bit of swing back and forth is normal. If you suddenly found gigs of disk space being used up for no apparent reason, that could be a cause for concern but is usually related to something like a process going error-crazy and writing thousands of log entries into a file that keeps growing bigger and bigger.

Bottom line, there's usually a good explanation for things, even if things are wonky. "It was a virus" is certainly not impossible, and is a frequent excuse on Windows, but so far there are no Mac OS X viruses out there. In fact, if something ever happens that makes you think you've got a virus, check out the front page news here at MacRumors.com first. If the leading story isn't "First Mac OS X virus discovered in the wild!" then your problem is not a virus.

 

[mstrze]

I have had this 'unable to delete' issue and sometimes it requires you to 'restart' the Finder...just go to the 'Force Quit' option.

Once Finder restarts (takes 4 seconds), you can almost always successfully empty the trash. This happens to me on the order of once or twice a year.

Sometimes it's nearly impossible to detect where the file is open...or it's a glitch.

 

[dsprimal]

Thank you so much everybody! Definitely feels like a weights lifted off my shoulders now I love this site

 

[calderone]

For those that are a little adventurous, you can use this command in Terminal:

lsof | grep filename

This will generally return what App is using a particular file.