Help! Suddenly 0 KB left on my startup disk!

[carpediem216]

I am running a Macbook with Leopard, and I tried to use the "Erase Unused Disk Space" in Disk Utility. It hung up for a good 10 minutes creating a temporary file, and I now have ZERO space left on my disk. How can I fix this!!! I can't even download any programs to help me fix it, if that's what is required...

I do have an external hard drive, if that would help...

 

[carpediem216]

Wait... I just deleted a movie file, just to free up SOME space, and now I'm back to 20 GB free...

What a stressful 10 minutes...

 

[xUKHCx]

It is a weird paradox where pressing erase free space actually fills up the drive.

I believe that if you restart the temporary file will be removed.

Or you can look in for some very large .sparseimage files

/var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/

Edit:

Wait... I just deleted a movie file, just to free up SOME space, and now I'm back to 20 GB free...

What a stressful 10 minutes...

Some people have reported that deleting anything, i.e. a completely empty folder, will free up that space as you have experienced. glad you got it sorted.

 

[SilentPanda]

Almost any time I try to zero my disc space I get a message about halfway through telling me I don't have enough disc space... I don't zero my space anymore... it boggles my mind when well over half my drive is empty.

 

[williamsonrg]

I had the same problem. I used a program on my PC back in the day to erase unused space, and it always freed up space. The fact that it does the opposite on my Mac is very strange to me...

Like you, I had a stressful few minutes until I deleted something. Very strange phenomenon.