Vanishing HD Space...

[TENBLUE7™]

...hello all.

I'm running a dual 500 G4 - 1GHZ RAM with two HD's one 80GB running my systems and apps and 30GB for work only.

I upgraded to Panther from 10.2.8 a week ago and recently noticed that my Primary HD available space has been reduced from 67GB to 32GB?

Ran Norton Disk Doctor, Speed Disk and DiskWarrior to no avail, finds for folders or files bigger than 10GB created over the last week also return squat.

I also I've done a get info for each folder on my Primary Disk and the total size for all is just under 10GB meaning that over 30GB of space has vanished.

Any ideas before I re-format, which is gonna be a nigthmare with all my apps and such like.

Cheers Christian

 

[cb911]

whoa. that sounds a bit extreme...

i was reading about Journaling in Panther today and it said that Journaling takes up a bit more disk space. i don't know if this has anything to do with Journaling gone wild.

do you even have Journaling enabled? anyway, let us know if it's fixed after you re-install.

good luck.

 

[TENBLUE7™]

...just disabled journaling and done a re-start I didn't expect the missing 30Gb to appear so I'm not dissapointed that it has not.

If I try and enable jornalling again it crashes the system (grey screen restart one).

Will do a format and full re-install next week so I'll post any developments - thanks for the good wishes.

 

[robbieduncan]

Just out of interest how did you do the upgrade (backup and wipe the disk, clean upgrade, archive or what). Whilst is seems very unlikely an archive of your old System folder could take up quite a lot of the missing space if the archive included installed Apps and the like.

 

[TENBLUE7™]

...Just an upgrade from 10.2.8 as mentioned to Panther, I made a note of watching just how much new stuff it put on especially when on the second CD installing extra text, language support etc

Noticed that files are examined and updated where needed as I didn't want a gig or two worths of chinese, russian language folders that I will never use. But still a get info on all system folders and such brings back nothing greater than a few gig.

The total size of all files and folders on my machine come to no more than 23GB as I thought journalling may have duplicated everything seeing as this time last week I had 69GB spare on an 80GB disk.

The HD is only 7 months old (IBM Deskstar) and has always ran quickly and quietly, Norton Disk Doctor found problems that couldn't be fixed (clump names etc) and the HD was severely fragmented when I ran Speed Disk.
But after a Speed Disk session and DiskWarrior fixing the problems Norton could not the space is still missing.

I'll try and index the volume which is gonna take a while but still every disk app shows the volume as being formatted at 77GB and With 40Gb being used, albiet 10Gb of that true.

Been using Macs 7 years and never come across something like this before, I've no idea what it could be.

Cheers Christian

 

[TENBLUE7™]

Fixed...

...as recommended I erased my primary disk from disk utility on the first Panther install disc and did a clean full install.

After spending all day re-loading apps and such like everything seems to be fine (touch wood) and the missing 30GB has been restored.

Nice to see Apple releasing a 10.3.1 update so soon after panther shipping also.

Seems like the advice on wiping any old system and starting afresh is the only way?...

Anyway thanks to all who offered advice - Christian.