Startup disc full? I have 48+ GB free. Help please!

[yankeesone82]

I'm on a Macbook Pro running Leopard and I have 48+ GB free, but last night and all morning I've been getting a warning periodically saying that my Startup Disc is full. When I open a finder window, it will say that I have 0 KB free, then slowly go up to 48 GB. Also, when I search for something in Finder, the search results will appear disappear and reappear continually.

I'm completely lost. If anyone could help me I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[Craigy]

I'm on a Macbook Pro running Leopard and I have 48+ GB free, but last night and all morning I've been getting a warning periodically saying that my Startup Disc is full. When I open a finder window, it will say that I have 0 KB free, then slowly go up to 48 GB. Also, when I search for something in Finder, the search results will appear disappear and reappear continually.

I'm completely lost. If anyone could help me I'd greatly appreciate it.

Try restarting your machine? - It happened to me once but a restart and repaired permissions fixed it.
Give it a try

 

[pointycollars]

It sounds like you have some kind of corrupt index - like the OS doesn't know exactly what's on the drive and has to keep "refreshing its memory" If you open up Activity Monitor, is the process "mdimport" chewing up large amounts of memory?

 

[yankeesone82]

It sounds like you have some kind of corrupt index - like the OS doesn't know exactly what's on the drive and has to keep "refreshing its memory" If you open up Activity Monitor, is the process "mdimport" chewing up large amounts of memory?

No, I don't even see it on the list of processes running.

 

[yankeesone82]

Try restarting your machine? - It happened to me once but a restart and repaired permissions fixed it.
Give it a try

I've tried restarting it. I even shut it down, rebooted and cleared the PRAM by holding Command+Option+P+R.

I have no idea what to do.

 

[misterredman]

Try booting in safe mode, by holding down the shift key. It will do a file system check on the OS partition. Beware it will take longer than the usual booting, so just wait.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US

If it doesn't work boot from the install discs and repair the disk with Disk Utility.