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MacBook Pro HDD OS error ?

EarthNeutron

EarthNeutron

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 6, 2010
201
0
Earth
Ok so, my Mac has been acting slow as hell in the past few months. So I decided to delete all of my TV shows, movies and crappy stuff that was filling my HDD for no actual reason. Before deleting over 1000 files, my HDD had 64 gb of free space out of 320. BUT AFTER DELETING!!! I had 66gb left. WTTTTFFF????? I've deleted over 100gb of files and I just got 2 gb back? I did a restart, even checked disk utility and the all show 66gb of free space.


WTFFF????? I waited over 10min for my Mac to empty the trash btw....
Software bug? If yes, I am so ditching Apple for my crappy Vaio....
 
Take a look at DiskInventory X (will not work in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.

And yes, it may be a software bug, but it could be something else too.
Just out of curiosity and for solving the problem, what Mac OS X version do you have?
And how did you determine, that the "all of your TV shows, movies and crappy stuff that was filling your HDD" were slowing down your Mac?
 
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simsaladimbamba said:
Take a look at DiskInventory X (will not work in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.

And yes, it may be a software bug, but it could be something else too.
Just out of curiosity and for solving the problem, what Mac OS X version do you have?
And how did you determine, that the "all of your TV shows, movies and crappy stuff that was filling your HDD" were slowing down your Mac?
Click to expand...

Ok so I'm using a MacBook pro 14 inch early 2011 base model with mac os x lion installed.
Yes I do have dozens of time machine backups but they are saved on my 1tb external hard drive.
 
EarthNeutron said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)



Ok so I'm using a MacBook pro 14 inch early 2011 base model with mac os x lion installed.
Yes I do have dozens of time machine backups but they are saved on my 1tb external hard drive.
Click to expand...

umm... there is no 14 inch MBP from early 2011...

Go to Apple>About this Mac> More info, and go to the storage tab. See what it says there in terms of what is on your hard drive.
 
EarthNeutron said:
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Ok so I'm using a MacBook pro 14 inch early 2011 base model with mac os x lion installed.
Yes I do have dozens of time machine backups but they are saved on my 1tb external hard drive.
Click to expand...

Have any of the applications I linked to shown you where your storage space is?

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating up my space? by theSeb
 
use the links provided by simsaladimbamba and take a computer class. or you could start by buying an external for all your junk.
 
GuitarG20 said:
umm... there is no 14 inch MBP from early 2011...

Go to Apple>About this Mac> More info, and go to the storage tab. See what it says there in terms of what is on your hard drive.
Click to expand...

13 inch, I wrote that from my iPhone (my bad). Anyway, here's the disk usage

audio 8 gb
movies 27gb (these are basically the ones I shot with my iPhone)
Photos 20gb
Apps 38gb,
Backups 60gb(how can I delete those??? I already have an external HDD where all my backups go so WtF is it necessary for OS X to backup to my Mac too?)
and other (100gb)

----------
bdodds1985 said:
use the links provided by simsaladimbamba and take a computer class. or you could start by buying an external for all your junk.
Click to expand...

1. I haven't downloaded the software recommended by simsaladimbamba (yet) but I will in the next couple of minutes.
2.I'm a computer system engineer so I do not need any further computer classes, though I've only switched to Mac for 4 months now.
3.I already have a 1TB external HDD (read my entire comments)
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Take a look at DiskInventory X (will not work in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.

And yes, it may be a software bug, but it could be something else too.
Just out of curiosity and for solving the problem, what Mac OS X version do you have?
And how did you determine, that the "all of your TV shows, movies and crappy stuff that was filling your HDD" were slowing down your Mac?
Click to expand...

Ok so after installing all the programs, I decided that omnidisksweeper is the best way to do. Anyway, I could not find the directory where all my backups are saved and there is no option to see what files are included in the "other" category
 
EarthNeutron said:
Backups 60gb(how can I delete those??? I already have an external HDD where all my backups go so WtF is it necessary for OS X to backup to my Mac too?)
)
Click to expand...

usually mine decreases in size after i plug in my drive and run time machine. there's also a way to disable local backups.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Again, as in post #9: What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating up my space? by theSeb
Click to expand...

So, I noticed this strange thing with OmniDiskSweeper. At the Drive List menu, my 320gb Macintosh HD has 61.9gb free out of 297gb (so basically 235gb used). When opening my Macintosh HD drive and after a couple of minutes of scanning the top bar says Machintosh HD 180gb. So basically I've used 180gb after the HD scan but before the scan it was 235gb? 235gb used is the same amount shown by Disk utility and about mac.

So if omnidisksweeper is right, then I have 55gb that should be free instead of occupied. Any ideas? BTW I checked your link and I will disable local backup sometime today.

PS I deleted a 1gb file using OmniDiskSweeper. The program rapidly showed the change but when I went to check disk utility I still had 66gb of free space instead of 67. The same for About Mac. Did a restart but nothing changed. I am deleting files like a wacko but the OS tells me my HDD is full!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
4 months and you already filled your hd up so much with junk that you didn't keep track of.

seriously.

I cant stop wondering how you have 100gb of "other" and have no idea what it is.

To delete backups stored on your hdd try the following:

1. Open ("Enter") Time Machine. This opens a finder window on a woozy space background.

2. In the finder window select the drive to which Time machine is saving its back-ups. You'll now see a list of the back-ups.

3. Select one of the middle files first as an experiment. Control-click (right click) that file and select "Delete all back-ups of (file name)."

4. Time machine files are large, so secure emptying your trash may now take a LONG time. This is why you want to do this one Time Machine back-up at a time. Secure empty trash.

This will safely delete a Time Machine back-up file.

and stop cussing. dont panic. If all else fails delete ALL your back ups, and partion a small size on your external to re back up apps and the little things you need, then re install the OS and pay attention to what you download and keep on the internal HDD. if you have a 1
 
bdodds1985 said:
4 months and you already filled your hd up so much with junk that you didn't keep track of.

seriously.

I cant stop wondering how you have 100gb of "other" and have no idea what it is.

To delete backups stored on your hdd try the following:

1. Open ("Enter") Time Machine. This opens a finder window on a woozy space background.

2. In the finder window select the drive to which Time machine is saving its back-ups. You'll now see a list of the back-ups.

3. Select one of the middle files first as an experiment. Control-click (right click) that file and select "Delete all back-ups of (file name)."

4. Time machine files are large, so secure emptying your trash may now take a LONG time. This is why you want to do this one Time Machine back-up at a time. Secure empty trash.

This will safely delete a Time Machine back-up file.

and stop cussing. dont panic. If all else fails delete ALL your back ups, and partion a small size on your external to re back up apps and the little things you need, then re install the OS and pay attention to what you download and keep on the internal HDD. if you have a 1
Click to expand...

Nope, entirely unrelated. If the OP tries to launch Time Machine without the external drive connected it won't even work, and all that's on the hard drive is what has been backed up since the last backup to the external hard drive.

OP, you can disable local backups via a Terminal command if you feel comfortable in the Terminal. Just use the following command:

Code: 
sudo tmutil disablelocal

jW
 
You probably have some rogue log files gone crazy. Check the /private/var folder for large logs.
 
NZed said:
Op

please calm down
Click to expand...

UPDATE: OK, so I deleted a couple of apps (about 20 gb in total).

BEFORE deleting them About Mac showed me exactly 64.78GB of free space.

AFTER deleting them it still showed 64.78GB! However, when I open Finder the bottom bar tell me that I have 150GB of free space (which is probably the real thing). So what the firetruck is wrong with About Mac? Seriously...

BTW OmnidiskSweeper tell me that I have 186gb of data on my HDD (320gb-186=134->about the same amount of space shown by the Finder bar)

BTW2 Disk utility tell me exactly the same thing as About Mac does: that I have 64.78GB of free space.

----------
Puevlo said:
You probably have some rogue log files gone crazy. Check the /private/var folder for large logs.
Click to expand...

NOOB question: where are those folders? I couldn't locate private although I worked my brains out trying to find the little bastard.
 
The reason your total free space didn't change is because of the local backups. Once you plug in your Time Machine hard drive, they'd go away (because they would then be transferred there), or you can actually read my previous post and disable them if you're that worried.

jW
 
Mal said:
The reason your total free space didn't change is because of the local backups. Once you plug in your Time Machine hard drive, they'd go away (because they would then be transferred there), or you can actually read my previous post and disable them if you're that worried.

jW
Click to expand...

Tried connecting my Time Machine HDD, it backed up but the space still ain't free. I am willing to try the terminal local backup deleting but isn't there another way of doing it? I mean seriously...how could Apple let such a flow into the wild and leaving us typing certain terminal commands that just a few people know, just to solve them....



UPDATE: I disabled local time machine backup and YES!, my local backup are gone. About Mac tell me that I have 112GB of free space.

HOWEVER, I still have 120gb of "Other data", not to mention that according to OmniDiskSweeper, I should have about 135 GB of free space (so at least 15gb are still missing)
 
Last edited:
This is probably way off base buuuuuut .....

Have you recently installed any downloaded programs that did not work?

Our symptom do not exactly fit yours, but in our case a user of a G4 Powermac attempted to install and run a program designed only for use on Intel Macs.

The results were disastrous, the program not only failed to work but it caused a massive amount of HDD space to disappear. We could not even install any diagnostic Apps due to lack of HDD space.

Our only remedy was to manually backup everything to an external HDD, then do a clean reinstall of the OS and all other apps.
 
harcosparky said:
This is probably way off base buuuuuut .....

Have you recently installed any downloaded programs that did not work?

Our symptom do not exactly fit yours, but in our case a user of a G4 Powermac attempted to install and run a program designed only for use on Intel Macs.

The results were disastrous, the program not only failed to work but it caused a massive amount of HDD space to disappear. We could not even install any diagnostic Apps due to lack of HDD space.

Our only remedy was to manually backup everything to an external HDD, then do a clean reinstall of the OS and all other apps.
Click to expand...

Yes, as a matter of fact I did install some cracked apps(mainly games)->cider ports which may have caused this....hmm...I'll try deleting all the cider apps that I currently use.
 
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