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Macintosh HD gets Full while working !

D

daBaki

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 10, 2008
7
0
Hello everybody,

Since I got a MacBook and I'm new in mac's world, I'm facing some weird stuff in my mac, well I have space left on my macintosh hd about one GB and half, and I don't like to turn it of the mac and suddenly my macintosh hd got full and at some point it shows me that you have zero kb left.

Does anyone know how to deal with it ?


thanks in advance,
daBaki.
 
SpookyLars said:
Do you have MobileMe account and enabled automatic synchronization?
Click to expand...

No I don't have account, but would it help me to solve the problem if I do?


Download and install "Disk Inventory X" from http://www.derlien.com/
It shows graphically what and where it takes space on HDD.
Click to expand...

I need something that it would do it job by it self, for instance in windows it doesn't take 1 GB while you are running it, I mean from 1 gb to zero kb available ???
 
daBaki said:
No I don't have account, but would it help me to solve the problem if I do?




I need something that it would do it job by it self, for instance in windows it doesn't take 1 GB while you are running it, I mean from 1 gb to zero kb available ???
Click to expand...

What do you mean? Your situation is a unique one. You have just used some program that filled the disk with "your stuff". No program can do anything "automaticly" and delete your non important stuff. You need your self to figure out what crap your computer is filled the disk with. With that program you can see what is the "obvious" missbehaving file type. Is it a some random program fault, generated huge log file, have you saved some big ass video file your selff by mistake etc...you need to figure your self! :rolleyes:

Just to make it clear: Its not "normal" that your disk gets automaticly full. Its full in your case because you have used some program that "messed up" and filled it with some weird files, ok?

And you should always keep some head room free space on your disk. I would recommend at least 10 Gig for "smooth" operation. Every running program needs some temporary space for log files and temp files.
 
johto said:
What do you mean? Your situation is a unique one. You have just used some program that filled the disk with "your stuff". No program can do anything "automaticly" and delete your non important stuff. You need your self to figure out what crap your computer is filled the disk with. With that program you can see what is the "obvious" missbehaving file type. Is it a some random program fault, generated huge log file, have you saved some big ass video file your selff by mistake etc...you need to figure your self! :rolleyes:

Just to make it clear: Its not "normal" that your disk gets automaticly full. Its full in your case because you have used some program that "messed up" and filled it with some weird files, ok?

And you should always keep some head room free space on your disk. I would recommend at least 10 Gig for "smooth" operation. Every running program needs some temporary space for log files and temp files.
Click to expand...


Dude, thanks for the hint, but I don't run any messy program, usually I run:
Safari, Msn Messenger, MPlayer, iTunes, and some apps, i mean wtf?! still it shouldn't get full like that. Anyway I'll try to figure out something.
another thing, If i'll leave 10 GB than for 10 days I'm going to be left with zero KB :D


Thanks for your help.
 
daBaki said:
Dude, thanks for the hint, but I don't run any messy program, usually I run:
Safari, Msn Messenger, MPlayer, iTunes, and some apps, i mean wtf?! still it shouldn't get full like that. Anyway I'll try to figure out something.
another thing, If i'll leave 10 GB than for 10 days I'm going to be left with zero KB :D


Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

Its not normal that your disk is filling up by it self. I suspect there is a "roque" app that is missbehaving and is puking some error log that fills yours disks :D I highly recommend you to use the program i told and maybe even put a screenshot of the results here so we can see the weirdness? :p
 
dude,
I'm posting a screenshot from that program.

Code: 
http://img65.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1fl5.png

??!
 
I think you will find this caused by the amount of RAM you have in the machine - OSX reserves space on the hard disk (same size as the RAM) for the contents of the RAM so that it can write it to disk when the machine goes to sleep.

You should not be running a Mac with 1GB hard disk free - please buy a larger disk or get rid of some stuff !!!!
 
You have an 18.6GB hard drive? In a MacBook? Did you set aside, say, 100GB for a Windows partition in BootCamp?
 
plinden said:
You have an 18.6GB hard drive? In a MacBook? Did you set aside, say, 100GB for a Windows partition in BootCamp?
Click to expand...

Guys, thanks for trying, i really appreciate it, and I have 80 GB hdd, 22GB are for the Macintosh HD and the rest for disk of my stuff. I just wanted to know why mac osx takes so much GB, I really likes macs even that I didn't have before, but when it comes to GB i'm seeing that they sucks, they take a lot of space, for a solution I should get an 320 GB HD.
 
logana said:
I think you will find this caused by the amount of RAM you have in the machine - OSX reserves space on the hard disk (same size as the RAM) for the contents of the RAM so that it can write it to disk when the machine goes to sleep.

You should not be running a Mac with 1GB hard disk free - please buy a larger disk or get rid of some stuff !!!!
Click to expand...

Ahh--thanks for that little tip about sleep--I didn't know that. :)
 
daBaki said:
Guys, thanks for trying, i really appreciate it, and I have 80 GB hdd, 22GB are for the Macintosh HD and the rest for disk of my stuff. I just wanted to know why mac osx takes so much GB, I really likes macs even that I didn't have before, but when it comes to GB i'm seeing that they sucks, they take a lot of space, for a solution I should get an 320 GB HD.
Click to expand...

Ok, are you saying you have two partitions? One of 22GB (reported as 18.6GB - actually, that means you have a 20GB partition) and one of 60GB of "your stuff"?

The 20GB partition is just not big enough. From your screen shot I see you have almost 5GB of applications, the OS X system files take maybe 4G and 2GB will be reserved for swap space. You have about 7GB in various documents ... oops, there's 18GB already.

If you really want to go with a 20 GB system partition, move your Documents and Downloads folders onto your second partition. Do you use iDVD or GarageBand? Remove them and their support files if you don't.

I actually do something similar to you, with a 500GB drive in my iMac. I have a 60GB systems partition that's about half full, and the rest is for documents/music/video. The reason I do this is to make backup easier. I back up my big partition once a day onto a network shared hard drive, and weekly I back up the system partition onto a 60GB external drive (actually a 120GB external drive with two partitions, one for my iMac and one for my wife's MacBook). But I couldn't work with a 20GB partition.
 
plinden said:
Ok, are you saying you have two partitions? One of 22GB (reported as 18.6GB - actually, that means you have a 20GB partition) and one of 60GB of "your stuff"?

The 20GB partition is just not big enough. From your screen shot I see you have almost 5GB of applications, the OS X system files take maybe 4G and 2GB will be reserved for swap space. You have about 7GB in various documents ... oops, there's 18GB already.

If you really want to go with a 20 GB system partition, move your Documents and Downloads folders onto your second partition. Do you use iDVD or GarageBand? Remove them and their support files if you don't.

I actually do something similar to you, with a 500GB drive in my iMac. I have a 60GB systems partition that's about half full, and the rest is for documents/music/video. The reason I do this is to make backup easier. I back up my big partition once a day onto a network shared hard drive, and weekly I back up the system partition onto a 60GB external drive (actually a 120GB external drive with two partitions, one for my iMac and one for my wife's MacBook). But I couldn't work with a 20GB partition.
Click to expand...

Wait, 22.88 Capacity GB whereas 22.34 is used, not 20 GB. but anyway the only solution i think is to get a bigger hd, again thanks. I just don't understand why while I'm working it takes space if I restarted it will be still 1 GB than start to get full.
 
daBaki said:
Wait, 22.88 Capacity GB whereas 22.34 is used, not 20 GB. but anyway the only solution i think is to get a bigger hd, again thanks. I just don't understand why while I'm working it takes space if I restarted it will be still 1 GB than start to get full.
Click to expand...

Hey, what are those "plain text" files you have over 2 gigs ? You can inspect with that app where those are and what file names those are. Please tell, i'm curious, are they your own "work files" ? You must be a superduper writer if you write 2 gigs worth of PLAIN text files :D

If those are some weird system files, they might be the ones that keeps growing "roque" because some weird erorr your having with the system. I would then recommend you to reinstall your whole system to clean partition :)

Oh, here is a picture if it helps:
20080910-kc21xadt44iw6jkgw5f957p79b.png


ps. just noticed, i too have 1.6 gigs worth of "plain text" files, but that is so much smaller effect relative to my overall file sizes, so yeah, you have way too small partition currently :rolleyes:
 
johto said:
Hey, what are those "plain text" files you have over 2 gigs ? You can inspect with that app where those are and what file names those are. Please tell, i'm curious, are they your own "work files" ? You must be a superduper writer if you write 2 gigs worth of PLAIN text files :D

If those are some weird system files, they might be the ones that keeps growing "roque" because some weird erorr your having with the system. I would then recommend you to reinstall your whole system to clean partition :)
Click to expand...

I don't know check them and tell me if I can delete them.

http://img230.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture2sa1.png
Click to expand...
 
The sleep image file can be deleted however it will return it is a system file that is generated when you put your computer to sleep.

Why are you running with two separate partitions?
Move some of the applications to the second partition? You need to have more space available on your boot partition to run properly and quickly. You are severally crippling your machine by doing this.

Free up some space

FYI if you do something similar on windows it will also complain, I know I have been managing a 40GB harddrive for the past 5 years.
 
Yeah, dont delete that file, its a sleepfile (system file) ... only delete your "own stuff", but best fix is to have bigger system partition, aka always have at least 5-10 gig free for system operations.
 
Your image says you have an 19.1GB hard drive. You say you have an 80GB hard drive... so where is the other 60.9GB?

Do you have a partition? If so what do you use it for? Why don't you make the 60GB partition smaller to allow some free space for the other partition.

As other have said, if you only have 1.5GB space left then that will be taken by the OS for RAM. That's why it shows up as empty.
 
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