OSX Private files

[StephenAcworth]

I was using DiskDaisy to see the size of folders/files on my full up HD and was surprised to see a 'private' folder that is nearly 9 gb in size... that seems rather large... is it normal? I understand that the folder contains system files etc, but the size concerns me. Thanks for your help!

 

[astrorider]

I was using DiskDaisy to see the size of folders/files on my full up HD and was surprised to see a 'private' folder that is nearly 9 gb in size... that seems rather large... is it normal? I understand that the folder contains system files etc, but the size concerns me. Thanks for your help!

/private contains /var/vm which has any virtual memory swapfiles as well as the sleep image file, both of which can be quite large. Upon reboot, your swapfiles will disappear and that folder may be much smaller.

For reference, I've currently got about 4GB of swapfiles and a sleep image that's 2GB in size. All perfectly normal