iChat File Transfers:

[dannyrome]

When I send music through iChat, I usually just highlight a song in iTunes and drag it into the box of a chat where you would normally type, and send it. Every now and then I hear the sound that is made when a file is copied to another location. Are the files I send being copied to another folder? How can i locate this folder so I can clear up space?
I must have been sending and receiving gigabytes of files, so I would like to clear up space, especially since I am losing space I cannot account for.

Also, is Onyx a safe program to use? I used it once and my computer actually felt like it was going a little faster and I freed up a lot of space.

 

[Feva]

is there an iChats folder in your documents?
~/Documents/iChats

Check the size of that folder..


iChat> Preferences>Messages>
'save chat transcripts'

I believe this log is setup to record everything, chat and file transfer..


Note: the file certainly do not copy to another folder..
but the data can be stored in these log files..

 

[FourCandles]

...
Also, is Onyx a safe program to use?
...

Onyx is as safe as any system utility that alters your OS X install away from how Apple serves it up. Of course you can mess your system up if you do something wrong, just like you can mess it up by using the Terminal if you don't know what you're doing. You can read the warnings that Onyx itself displays when it installs and starts up for the best advice.

 

[dotnsk]

Another culprit perhaps?

Just to give you my perspective (as I have transferred a huge number of files via iChat over the three years I've been logging chats), I don't think iChat is necessarily the culprit of your disappearing space.

Checking the entire folder of my chat logs reveals a folder with 231 MB of chats in it, ranging from mid 2007 to present day. I've probably transferred over a gigabyte of information via iChat, so I think it's safe to say that the chats do not contain full copies of the files transferred within.

When you transfer a file from a location on your computer to a recipient in iChat, it is likely that the computer just creates a path to the file on your computer and lets the user download it via that (rather than copying the file to another directory and doing the same thing). Someone with more technical knowledge than I have may refute that claim, but that is my rudimentary understanding as to how that works.

Your disappearing space may be due to another culprit. I'd make a full backup of all your information before doing any troubleshooting, but if you don't know what you're doing, definitely visit a Genius Bar before tinkering.

Good luck!