SSD Space

[macfan74318]

Hello,

I currently use a 60 GB SSD and the amount of space free on the drive dosent seem to add up. I use about 26 GB including Lion on the drive so it should show about 36 GB free but it only shows 19 GB. Is it because of the Recovery HD Partition because that only takes up 650 MB according to "diskutil".

Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Macfan

 

[GGJstudios]

There are a few things you can try:

• Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
  
  
• For Time Machine users on Lion, Time Machine local snapshots may be consuming space.
• Use DiskInventory X (pre-Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.

 

[jtabije]

OS X has this feature called Safe Sleep that saves an image of what is on your RAM when your computer goes to sleep/hibernation. Typically, the information is saved and read from your RAM when your MBP wakes in order to restore you back to where you were prior to sleep. However, in the case of your battery dying while it is still sleeping, your MBP can instead read the information from your HDD -- a very useful feature, but more or less useless if you never let your battery die.

The size of the image that is saved is equal to the amount of RAM you have, and you can manually change your sleep settings and delete this sleep image:

http://installingcats.com/2008/05/23/how-to-turn-off-safe-sleep/

I, too, have an SSD and did this in order to free up more space. The change worked like a charm. All the best!

 

[thundersteele]

Usually there is up to 10% discrepancy between the advertised capacity and the actual capacity of the HD. Disc Utility should tell you what the actual capacity of your SSD is, e.g. my 128 GB shows as 121.33 GB disc. Don't ask me why this is the case, I think on SSDs a few blocks have to be used as cache or for maintenance or something like that...

Second, if you are using Lion, any discrepancy between the displayed free HD space is often due to local time machine backups. GJJstudios already posted the relevant link.

Finally, DiscInventoryX (again, GJJstudios has the link, it also works on Lion) is very useful to see what files are occupying large amounts of HD space, e.g. the sleepimage which occupies space the size of your RAM.

 

[appleraj]

OS X has this feature called Safe Sleep that saves an image of what is on your RAM when your computer goes to sleep/hibernation. Typically, the information is saved and read from your RAM when your MBP wakes in order to restore you back to where you were prior to sleep. However, in the case of your battery dying while it is still sleeping, your MBP can instead read the information from your HDD -- a very useful feature, but more or less useless if you never let your battery die.

The size of the image that is saved is equal to the amount of RAM you have, and you can manually change your sleep settings and delete this sleep image:

http://installingcats.com/2008/05/23/how-to-turn-off-safe-sleep/

I, too, have an SSD and did this in order to free up more space. The change worked like a charm. All the best!

Thank You soooo much for this, I have owc 60g. was 14.66 used now 6.6. WOW thanks man. I have 8g ram. thanks a lot

 

[Sonhascome]

Check out daisydisk it should give you some more information on how the space is being used. Go to time machine preferences though and turn off time machine, that might be the root of your problems, then you can manual tell it to back up when you plug your hard drive in.