Shrinking Hard Drive?

[jondy1703]

A similar problem has been asked before, but the situation is different and the solutions outlined in the thread did not answer my questions.

I have an Early 2008 (meaning last model before unibody) 15" 2.53 GHz MBP.

I cleaned up my computer and its 250 GB HDD (50 GB Boot Camp, rest OS X), repaired permissions, did a full back-up to an external hard drive with a total of around 9+ GB free on the OS X partition.

I downloaded Lion from the App store, brought me down to about 6.3 ish GB. I attempted to install, Lion said no because of the way my BootCamp partition was set up, I said fine, I'll wait till I get a new HDD and set up a clean install then. I didn't manage to take a look at free hard drive space at the time.

Later that night, I went to back up/sync my iPad. It had been a while, but my iPad hadn't accumulated much data. It was also time for an update.

As the update was unpackaging, I got the message that I'm running out of space. I had gone from 6.3 GB to 100 MB. I hoped it was just the firmware update unpackaged, but after the update went through and I restarted, I had only gotten back to 1.2 GB. I woke up the next morning to have 800 MB, which slowly dwindled down to about 600 or 500 MB.

I when to the root which had OS X Lion Update Files folder for about 3.7 GB, which I ultimately deleted, but none of the space came back even after a restart.

What's going on?

I've already looked through files with OmniDiskSweeper, which said I have used about 177 GB, meanwhile my hard drive reports 195 GB used, which makes me think my hard drive drain is in hidden folders somewhere.

EDIT: Just repaired permissions again, no change.

 

[snaky69]

It's time you upgrade your HD, running with that little free space will just make your computer run like a slug.

 

[jondy1703]

It's time you upgrade your HD, running with that little free space will just make your computer run like a slug.

Runs fine even when I have less than 2 GB left. Wouldn't matter if I replaced it if the drive keeps shrinking though, I want to know why this is happening. I could easily revert to the backup I created and ultimately that may end up happening but I just want to figure out what is going on so that I can prevent it from happening later.

Plus my Apple Care runs out in October and I'm not going to bother voiding the warranty so close to the date. Hell, if the drive dies now, that's all well and good because I'd get a new one out of the deal but it needs to happen shortly if at all.

 

[jenzjen]

Do a clean install and then do NOT restore from backup.

 

[man02195]

EDIT: Just repaired permissions again, no change.

Any of these a possibility?
1. Do you run vmware and/or parallels? parallels sets aside memory at user/username/documents/parallels/
2. Lion has a sleepimage at private/var/vm/sleepimage
3. Time machine has some temporary files it collects while you're not connected to your drive. Turn off time machine and see if it changes
4. Omnisweeper counts space differently from apple

 

[jondy1703]

Any of these a possibility?
1. Do you run vmware and/or parallels? parallels sets aside memory at user/username/documents/parallels/
2. Lion has a sleepimage at private/var/vm/sleepimage
3. Time machine has some temporary files it collects while you're not connected to your drive. Turn off time machine and see if it changes
4. Omnisweeper counts space differently from apple

1. I do run VMWare Fusion, but those files have not grown and I have not run it in a while.
2. Not running Lion, still on Snow Leopard.
3. Should I hook up to my drive first to make sure all fo the changes since then get taken?
4. Yeah, makes sense, but it didn't seem like it would be that big of a discrepancy.

 

[randomrazr]

1. I do run VMWare Fusion, but those files have not grown and I have not run it in a while.
2. Not running Lion, still on Snow Leopard.
3. Should I hook up to my drive first to make sure all fo the changes since then get taken?
4. Yeah, makes sense, but it didn't seem like it would be that big of a discrepancy.

yes

 

[jondy1703]

No change after turning off time machine. Any other suggestions from anyone?

 

[cmclaughlan]

Try "Grand Perspective" it will show you system files, hidden thinks like sleep files as well as your regular files.

Will make it visually immediate if anything untoward is happening with your disk.

 

[marc11]

Have you emptied your trash?

 

[jondy1703]

Try "Grand Perspective" it will show you system files, hidden thinks like sleep files as well as your regular files.

Will make it visually immediate if anything untoward is happening with your disk.

It's a nice program, nothing is alarmingly large though. I do have a sleep image at 4 GB, but that's for Snow Leopard, right? That should probably stick around.

Have you emptied your trash?

Trash is totally empty.