Large unknown files in Macbook Library

[fatbunneh]

Hello Knowledgeable People!

I recently discovered, after running Disk Inventory X, some really fat files in my Library. I haven't touched them, as I read on another forum that it could be dangerous but is there anything I can do to get rid of them? I thought maybe they were left there after a recent Time Machine backup because I read that happening to someone else in another forum...

I've attached screenshots (I think) of the two biggest files. Please someone help me, I'm a bit stupid when it comes to the more advanced stuff like this.

Thanks.

 

[robbieduncan]

sleepimage is the contents of your RAM when your Mac goes to sleep: it's there to allow the Mac to wake up if it looses all power

swapfile is from your Mac running out of RAM and swapping contents to disc

You should leave them both alone.

 

[fatbunneh]

Hmmm...that's very useful. I run Disk Inventory X regularly though and they've never appeared before. Any reason?

 

[Makosuke]

The reasons they might not have been there before follow directly from what each does. Swapfile might not have existed, or at least have been much smaller, if your Mac hadn't swapped any RAM to disk since the last reboot. I'd think sleepimage would exist permanently so that the necessary disk space was reserved, but maybe it doesn't get created until the first sleep after a reboot, in which case you might have run the inventory shortly after rebooting.

Neither is anything new, though--sleepimage has been around for several OS versions, and swapfile should have been there since the beginning of OSX.