Mac Pro Losing Hard Drive Space.

[SimonGarlick]

Hi, I work on a Mac Pro, and have recently been getting close to the Hard Drives capacity, so after backing up files, I freed up around 5Gb of space, only to notice this decrease in size as the day goes along. I currently have 2.96Gb free. I've not downloaded any files or applications that would use up this amount of space. We store all our work on a central server, which is also close to capacity, having just 1Gb left from the 370Gb available.

Just wondered what might be using up the hard drive space I have available, whether it's anything to do with the server we're connected to, and if there's any way of recovering the used space?

Thanks for any help.

Regards,
Simon

 

[SimonGarlick]

Just taken this screenshot from the Activity Monitor, and noticed that Virtual Memory (VM) is using 17.75Gb, this seems a bit excessive, is this normal? And, is it possible to free some of this used Hard Drive space up?

Thanks again.

Regards,
Simon

 

[JesterJJZ]

Do you only have one drive? Are you running Time Machine on it?

 

[UltraNEO*]

Without a detailed system specification, it's pretty much impossible to determine what's being used, where. For instance, you talk about backups but where they stored? How many drives you have installed on your system? Is there any other drives attached besides remote server?

 

[Tesselator]

Just taken this screenshot from the Activity Monitor, and noticed that Virtual Memory (VM) is using 17.75Gb, this seems a bit excessive, is this normal? And, is it possible to free some of this used Hard Drive space up?

Thanks again.

Regards,
Simon

There's about 1000 things it could be. Cache files from anything. PDF indexing. logging, etc. etc.

The solution of course is to stop being cheap, take a hammer to your piggy-bank, and buy a hard drive.

 

[SimonGarlick]

Thanks for the replies, to try and answer some of your questions, the files I backed up were burnt to DVD, I work at a Design Agency and we use an X-Server as a central storage space, which is also just a 1Gb from reaching its capacity. We don't use Time Capsule, we use the server to store all images and files, rather than on our individual Macs, so anyone can access the file, regardless of whether all the Macs are switched on.

Regarding the cache question, I create a lot of PDF's every day and week, so if this were a problem, how would I go about emptying the cache?

Attached is a screenshot of the system specs of my Mac Pro, hope this is of help. Thanks for any further assistance.

Regards,
Simon

 

[Abidubi]

Why would anyone even care whether they have 5GB or 1GB left... thats ridiculously stupid in this day and age. If you were running an iMac from 1999 with only a 6GB HD then ya it's a problem, but seriously. Why the heck would you only be using 1 370GB HD? A 1TB HD is $100. You can get 4 2TB HDs easy in your system. You are talking about 1/1600 of the available space you can have in your system (your entire tiny 370GB HD is only 1/20).

So where is that 4GB going? It's simple. Computers today are designed to run on systems with hundreds of GBs of free space. Everything is cached. Caches are cached. Every web page you visited for the past month is probably stored on your HD. If you use google earth there could be gigs of satellite imagery on you HD.

To compare, thats like you coming here and saying "Of my 32MB of RAM I have 500MB free left on my system, but sometimes this goes to 100MB free". It's so insignificant. Or if you had 4GB and only 54MB were free and sometimes going down to 10MB. The answer would of course be BUY MORE RAM.


And FYI all I have been doing is e-mail and browsing since the system started up and I am using 117GB of virtual memory. 17GB... pfft.

 

[hollywood084]

Why would anyone even care whether they have 5GB or 1GB left... thats ridiculously stupid in this day and age. If you were running an iMac from 1999 with only a 6GB HD then ya it's a problem, but seriously. Why the heck would you only be using 1 370GB HD? A 1TB HD is $100. You can get 4 2TB HDs easy in your system. You are talking about 1/1600 of the available space you can have in your system (your entire tiny 370GB HD is only 1/20).

So where is that 4GB going? It's simple. Computers today are designed to run on systems with hundreds of GBs of free space. Everything is cached. Caches are cached. Every web page you visited for the past month is probably stored on your HD. If you use google earth there could be gigs of satellite imagery on you HD.

To compare, thats like you coming here and saying "Of my 32MB of RAM I have 500MB free left on my system, but sometimes this goes to 100MB free". It's so insignificant. Or if you had 4GB and only 54MB were free and sometimes going down to 10MB. The answer would of course be BUY MORE RAM.


And FYI all I have been doing is e-mail and browsing since the system started up and I am using 117GB of virtual memory. 17GB... pfft.

$100 is $100. Sometimes you just don't have it for a computer upgrade :\

 

[Abidubi]

$100 is $100. Sometimes you just don't have it for a computer upgrade :\

A design agency, with multiple Macs, 1 of which is at least a $2000 machine and a server can't afford $100 to keep the machine current... a fraction of the hundreds of thousands that is spends on it's employee's salaries? 10 employees at only $25000 a year is $250000 it has to be making to pay them. You're telling me they can't afford a .04% cut into their annual income after 3 years (the machine has got to be at least that old to have come with a 370GB HD).

Sorry but $100 is nothing to anyone who can support themselves if it's an expense that is only expected every couple years, let alone a company. If you can't afford $100 you have bigger worries than how much space you have left on your HD.

 

[Tesselator]

$100 is $100. Sometimes you just don't have it for a computer upgrade :\

Barrow it. Heck, you can get $100 by panhandling on the street corner for an hour or two.

"Hey mister, got a spare twenty? My computer hasn't eaten in two years. Thanks!"