Help! Hard drive space issue

[Waywick]

My Mac is having a weird problem....

Last time I checked I had at least 6gb free space left, and over night, it went down to 0kb.

I even deleted some things and it was up to 2gb. After awhile, it went back down to 0kb.

I really don't want to get a new HD, because for some reason my Tiger disk won't read, so that's a little pricey there for both a new HD and Tiger.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Try http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/ or www.derlien.com to see, where your HDD space went to.

It might be a sleep image or the swap files, though, and it is considered wise, to have at least 10% of the HDD's capacity unused (meaning 25GB free on a 250GB HDD).

Btw, you can get replacement Restore DVDs from Apple for around 30$, or if you have an Intel Mac, you can get Snow Leopard for 29$, it will work as RETAIL DVD, you don't need the Mac Box Set, though you will have to get iLife from somewhere else, if you need it and your Tiger DVD does not work.

Btw, you could also get an external 2.5" HDD for less than 50$.

 

[Waywick]

Try http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/ or www.derlien.com to see, where your HDD space went to.

It might be a sleep image or the swap files, though, and it is considered wise, to have at least 10% of the HDD's capacity unused (meaning 25GB free on a 250GB HDD).

Btw, you can get replacement Restore DVDs from Apple for around 30$, or if you have an Intel Mac, you can get Snow Leopard for 29$, it will work as RETAIL DVD, you don't need the Mac Box Set, though you will have to get iLife from somewhere else, if you need it and your Tiger DVD does not work.

Btw, you could also get an external 2.5" HDD for less than 50$.

Alright, thanks, I'll try those.

But now, my HD space is slowly going up, this is just odd.

 

[zachsilvey]

Did you try restarting, sometimes if you don't shutdown for a while cache and swap builds up. It could also just have been a miscalculation.

Like a earlier poster said, you don't ever want to get that low though or you are going to suffer performance drop.

 

[Waywick]

Did you try restarting, sometimes if you don't shutdown for a while cache and swap builds up. It could also just have been a miscalculation.

Like a earlier poster said, you don't ever want to get that low though or you are going to suffer performance drop.

Yeah, I tried restarting.

I tried that program in the earlier post.

I didn't see anything sucking up my HD, or anything new, like a virus.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Yeah, I tried restarting.

I tried that program in the earlier post.

I didn't see anything sucking up my HD, or anything new, like a virus.

Yea, a virus definitely sucks up or frees up space, if one vomits enough the soup one drank earlier. THERE ARE NO VIRUSES FOR MAC OS X (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1063304/).

Can you post some numbers on how much MB or GB you are talking about with your HDD capacity fluctuations? Maybe it is just the swap files that get generated and deleted.

 

[MDiak47]

Download an excellent program called "jdisk report" it will give you a complete analysis of your harddrive...Takes a little while to index your entire harddrive but it is well worth the time.

 

[azad3277]

I cant get any space free!

my Mac problem is even weirder!
some moron filled my HD and to free some space deleted some files without empty trash. now I have zero k available, can not move anything, when I empty trash in anyways I just get the paper sound but everything is still there. I cant even cut and paste or copy and paste anything to external HD.

 

[Waywick]

Well, I didn't expect to get many replies.

Thanks to all who have tried helping so far!

 

[Heath]

Another culprit may be log files, I've had a few log files reach the 4 gig mark without me realizing it.