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What's eating up my hd space?

M

molani

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
3
0
I used to have approximately 20gb of extra space on my hard drive, but recently it seems to have been diminished significantly. I have run all programs known to me (disk inventory X, monolingual, apptrap) to clear out unwanted goods, but the problem persists.
In fact, 2 days ago, after clearing out all the muck, I had 5.56gb. Today, I looked at the "info" on my drive and I had 1.47! I have not downloaded anything! And I have less space than 2 days ago? I tried with more gusto to clear everything out (cleared all histories, caches, etc), but was only able to gain about 1.5 gb.
Someone please help.
much mac love
-anita
 
Check and see how much stuff is in your iTunes folder.

Things that have been deleted from your iTunes library may still be in your folders.
 
I had a similar problem. I use MAIL and have a Gmail account. There was something with Gmail that was causing a "Recovered mail" folder to fill with the same email hundreds of times. Of course there were pictures in the email and I lost over 50 gigs of space. I would delete them and it would refill. Unfortunately I've forgotten how I fixed it, but if this is your problem, I will look into it further.
 
Do you by chance run any other music program that iTunes? I ask this as I have read that some Windows based music programs in OS X will actually duplicate your music. And if that happens, then your free space gets

2944286035_48ffd67fc6.jpg


You get the picture.
 
It just keeps getting worse

Here I am, 2 days later, and I am down to 904 MB. I have not downloaded anything. There is definitely something wrong here. This never used to happen. I had about 20 GB of extra space that I would eventually fill up with photo and video files, then I would move them to my external drive, and my space would be cleared again.
I have been looking at the var/log/asl files. They are consuming 41.5GB and some of the largest are from the last few days. I have done a bit of research, but I have not found anything definitive on whether it is safe to delete these files.
Is it safe to delete these files? Can anyone think of a reason they might be "growing out of control"?
 
Also, thank you for your responses!

Herb Dorklift - I tried omnidisksweeper, and it was much easier to view than disk inventory x. Thanks!
I have used Onyx to try to delete files, etc, but it hasn't loosened up much space.

Crazoski - I do not use mail. I use Gmail, but Im not sure how that would be linked to my computer.

NicZak - I do not use any other music program than Itunes, and even then, I haven't downloaded music to Itunes in a long time.
 
molani said:
Here I am, 2 days later, and I am down to 904 MB. I have not downloaded anything. There is definitely something wrong here. This never used to happen. I had about 20 GB of extra space that I would eventually fill up with photo and video files, then I would move them to my external drive, and my space would be cleared again.
I have been looking at the var/log/asl files. They are consuming 41.5GB and some of the largest are from the last few days. I have done a bit of research, but I have not found anything definitive on whether it is safe to delete these files.
Is it safe to delete these files? Can anyone think of a reason they might be "growing out of control"?
Click to expand...

It seems that way:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/641936/
 
You could spend more time trying to figure out what's happening, but I have no idea what will happen when your virus keeps growing and you're out of physical disk space.

I would backup what I need and do a clean OS install and reinstall programs back one by one.
 
You can safely delete /var/log/asl files, but if you do, you won't know what's causing the problem and it'll likely return.

Follow the link given by simsaladimbamba and see if any of the suggestions I gave there help.

And no, there's no need yet to reinstall your OS.
 
jenzjen said:
You could spend more time trying to figure out what's happening, but I have no idea what will happen when your virus keeps growing and you're out of physical disk space.

I would backup what I need and do a clean OS install and reinstall programs back one by one.
Click to expand...

Correct. Viruses are the cause, all zero of them.
 
molani said:
I have been looking at the var/log/asl files. They are consuming 41.5GB and some of the largest are from the last few days. I have done a bit of research, but I have not found anything definitive on whether it is safe to delete these files.
Is it safe to delete these files? Can anyone think of a reason they might be "growing out of control"?
Click to expand...

Just did a quick search and found this that you might find useful.
 
Viruses may eat up space on PCs, but it would not do that on OS X. You can have the file that is a virus physically on your Mac, but this virus has no effect and is, in essence, an incompatible and harmless file. All viruses currently do not affect OS X. That can obviously change, but it probably hasn't changed yet and a virus would be the last thing to cause this issue.

I would run diagnostics on the hard drive health again using Disk Utility and an online Benchmark system to ensure it is operating correctly. If all else fails, you may want to wipe the hard drive and do a clean install.
 
Easy there those too literal with too much time on their hands tigers, I used virus loosely to describe whatever was ever-growing inside her machine eating her space, that's all.
 
jenzjen said:
Easy there those too literal with too much time on their hands tigers, I used virus loosely to describe whatever was ever-growing inside her machine eating her space, that's all.
Click to expand...

Ah. You could have explained that in your post though, as it is misleading and the culprit has already been found and named.
 
Yes, if you use mail, you may have tons of picture attachments or pdfs that take up huge amounts of space, at least thats what happened to me.
 
molani said:
I used to have approximately 20gb of extra space on my hard drive, but recently it seems to have been diminished significantly. I have run all programs known to me (disk inventory X, monolingual, apptrap) to clear out unwanted goods, but the problem persists.
In fact, 2 days ago, after clearing out all the muck, I had 5.56gb. Today, I looked at the "info" on my drive and I had 1.47! I have not downloaded anything! And I have less space than 2 days ago?
Click to expand...
Have you tried restarting your Mac, and does more free space appear when you do? If so, it's your pagefile growing.
jenzjen said:
but I have no idea what will happen when your virus keeps growing and you're out of physical disk space.
Click to expand...
There are no viruses in the wild that can run on current Mac OS X, and only a handful of trojans, none of which display the symptoms that the OP is having.

Mac Virus/Malware Info
jenzjen said:
I would backup what I need and do a clean OS install and reinstall programs back one by one.
Click to expand...
There is no need to do something as drastic as a reinstall until simpler troubleshooting steps have been completed.
 
GGJstudios said:
There are no viruses in the wild that can run on current Mac OS X, and only a handful of trojans, none of which display the symptoms that the OP is having.

Mac Virus/Malware Info

There is no need to do something as drastic as a reinstall until simpler troubleshooting steps have been completed.
Click to expand...

You would have seen I was being casual when I wrote viruses if you read the thread.

Also, it is all about opportunity cost of time. It already has been 2 days since she posted her problem, so you can definitely troubleshoot further using more time or most likely resolve the situation within 4 hours, which I what a wipe plus copying files back would probably take. Recall, for some reason, her space keeps dwindling as time goes by, what happens when whatever is going on completely fills the drive?

Different strokes for different folks.
 
I noticed yesterday that I lost about 30 GB from my hd in the span of about 10 minutes. I just downloaded Disk Inventory X and I think I found the problem...I just have no idea what it is and if it is ok to delete...or even how to delete it.

Anyone have any ideas?

I've attached a screenshot.
 

Attachments

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neitherof you by chance are on a network and have someone dropping stuff into your dropbox folder?
 
ender land said:
neitherof you by chance are on a network and have someone dropping stuff into your dropbox folder?
Click to expand...

I was actually trying to drop something into my dropbox to put on a new computer, but nothing happened...Or I guess it would seem something did happen. But nothing transferred to the other computer.

Is that what the problem is?
 
Crazoski said:
I had a similar problem. I use MAIL and have a Gmail account. There was something with Gmail that was causing a "Recovered mail" folder to fill with the same email hundreds of times. Of course there were pictures in the email and I lost over 50 gigs of space. I would delete them and it would refill. Unfortunately I've forgotten how I fixed it, but if this is your problem, I will look into it further.
Click to expand...

Yup, that was my problem too: it's not a virus, but a mail app BUG which caused my HD space to be consumed by creating 1,000's of copies of a single e-mail with a large attachment.

Here's the fix:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_...-x-mail-creating-multiple-recovered-messages/

(I'm still running 10.6.8, and holding off on updating to the free 10.9 (Mavericks), since a few needed mission-critical apps are not yet compatible.)

After the fix, my HD (which was full, throwing up those 'disk almost full' warnings) now has 55GB available.
 
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