A friend with a MacBook Pro (120gb, 10.4.11) keeps getting the message that his start up disk is full, even though he says he has 85gb of free space. What could be causing this, and what can be done about it? He says his log files (the only thing I could think of) only amount to a few megabites. And btw, he has no external hard disk. And yes, the trash is empty!
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Start Up disk full?
- Thread starter BlueMeanie
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Are you sure that's his startup disk? The startup disk will be the first one listed on the desktop. That's the only thing I can think of... 
Have your friend run Disk Utility on the Macintosh HD and verify/repair disk if need be. Sounds like something buggy in the OS in terms of how much space is available and what it thinks is available.
I advised him to run disk utility, but before he had the chance it got so bad that he is now unable to start it up at all. This has never happened to me in 20 years of using a Mac. He should boot up from the system disk, right?
Yeah, not being able to boot into the OS does limit your options. To boot up to the disk he/she will have to hold down 'C' with the disc in the drive. After the use English as main language window, you should be able to access Disk Utility from the Utilities menu at the top of the screen.
Did you find out what the cause of this was, and a possible solution? I just got the "startup disk is almost full" popup, and I checked my disk and see that I still have 145 gigs of free space. What is going on?