Storage creep?

[Poindexter333]

My new MBA-Rev E/2011 13"/i5 1.7Ghz/4GB/128SSD Samsung/10.7.1- has been doing something unusual- while in use- I can be doing anything, from watching a video, to browsing online, or even Wp'ing offline, within an hour or 2 I have a hidden 3-4 GIGS of something filling up my hard drive. It's NOT the webpage previews, as I have those blocked. Searching through the drive with various apps shows up no suspects. But, a simple restart will solve the issue- temporarily- for a few hours. I do not remember it ever doing this before recently. I rarely keep many apps open- usually just Safari, WeatherMan Lite, and Chrome.

I have not yet upped to 10.7.2 as I have heard of some outstanding 'issues,' nor have I done the EFI update either for the same reason, so therefore I have not done the latest Safari update either.

Yes, I am down to less than 10% of my 128GB SSD free- usually under 5 gigs free actually. Contributing factors? Need any more info? This is very puzzling, as well as getting that annoying "startup disk full" error constantly.


Any ideas? :dontknow:

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Maybe because your SSD is so full, OS X is deleting the swap file for extra space (then recreating it as necessary?)

 

[GGJstudios]

Use DiskInventory X (pre-Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive.

Also check to see if mobilebackups are taking up space.

 

[Poindexter333]

Use DiskInventory X (pre-Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive.

Also check to see if mobilebackups are taking up space.

Thanks. I am a regular user of GP and Daisy Disk. Neither shows anything remotely approaching that size. Invisible folder hint one? So I just tried the Terminal command as you linked. I do not use Time Machine- preferring to do this manually. Thanks. Hopefully this will deal with it.

 

[johnhurley]

Yes, I am down to less than 10% of my 128GB SSD free- usually under 5 gigs free actually. Contributing factors? Need any more info? This is very puzzling, as well as getting that annoying "startup disk full" error constantly.

Can you purge or move some stuff to give you a reasonable amount of free space on your system?

I am new to mac but old on solaris/linux etc and an old habit is to start worrying and taking action on any system with 20% ( or less ) free space. As close as you are pushing your system it seems likely to do some unusual things nearing boundary conditions.

 

[Poindexter333]

Can you purge or move some stuff to give you a reasonable amount of free space on your system?

I am new to mac but old on solaris/linux etc and an old habit is to start worrying and taking action on any system with 20% ( or less ) free space. As close as you are pushing your system it seems likely to do some unusual things nearing boundary conditions.

Yeah. Time to bite the bullet and get a nice sized backup drive- like a 2TB or so. What's the old line about how free space will inevitably draw more stuff to it until you're full up again rather quickly. I thought 128GB was a godsend from 80GB. Wrong! Now I have almost 80GB worth of music.

I tried to keep 10% free, but nooooooooooooooo......

 

[convergent]

Lion stores interim TimeMachine backups in hidden space on your hard drive. In my case it chewed up 40G of my disk before I discovered it and disabled it.