I know this has been asked before and I asked it once too, but I don't understand all these technical terms and nothing I did worked. I've now got over 20GB in this "private" folder as I saw in Disc Inventory X. I cannot find this folder anywhere when I search and I cannot delete it.
View 7 RepliesSo my computer has about 4gb of free space on the hd. I leave for a few minutes, come back and see in the finder that there is 0KB! It also won't let me do anything, not even quit itunes because it says it can't save the library file. It's weird because the computer was idle, I'm pretty sure the only open app was iTunes.
So I restart the computer but nothing has changed. So I transfer a bunch of files to an external HD then delete them. So I now have free space. I want to know where the space went though? I opened OmniDiskSweeper to see what's taking up space and I see this folder called "private" that I've never seen before. Where is this located and could this be the space that disappeared? I included a screenshot so you can see where the folder is.
I realised a big chunk of my hard drive space missing and couldn't find where it had gone. I downloaded Disk Inventory and ran the program. It shows that i have a folder called 'Private' within this are three sub folders:
Var
Log
Asl
I have searched for all of these and can't find them on my hard drive anywhere. Can anyone tell me what these are, if I can delete them and if so how do I find them.
I had a program in Windows that graphically showed different slices of files on my computer and let me drill down on folders that were using the most data. It was very helpful in trying to clean up junk. Is there an equivalent program that does the same in OS X? Freeware if possible.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI was wondering how to get into my private folder? where is that located, what is the path?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have accidentally deleted the Private folder in the root of the HD. Now OSX will not boot. The folder is still sitting in my Trash folder and I would like from the Boot CD Terminal to copy back from the trash to the Macintosh HD/ location.
View 13 Replies View RelatedI was wondering if it is possible to make a certain folder password protected? If so, how would I do that? I only want to require password on one specific folder.
View 24 Replies View RelatedI deleted my /Private folder. I'm not sure how I was able to but I think I deleted some random little files in my Mac HD before that and I do recall entering my password (the administrative / master password) to authorize the deletion. So that's how I got into this situation. I'd just also like to say that I do not have my information backed up.
What I Have Tried:
- Rebooting in Single-User mode following some code I found off a forum for someone who had only deleted their /var folder- Failed!
- Rebooting in SU mode following code off Apple Support website- Failed!
- Called 1-800-MY-APPLE - was told I could only reinstall everything- Failed!
- Went into the Genius Bar to talk to a Genius. He tried to start up remotely with an External HD- Failed!
- Was told by the Genius to take a firewire cable and hook up my computer to another Mac and start in Target Disk mode, move all my data onto there (or an external HD attached to computer 2) and then reinstall - Failed! (Reason: The second computer could not detect my computer? Indexing was taking forever but I couldn't stop Spotlight from indexing because I could not find it... My disk / the icon does not appear on the desktop. BUT, it was detected through Time Machine.)
Just did it by mistake. Now the Mac can not show up the log in screen anymore. How can I recover from it.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI was searching around on Google trying to find a way of creating a private folder, all I found was articles saying that you had to create a disk image of a folder, the only problem is that the whole password system wouldn't always work. So I thought of a better way, what you do is with the folder you wish to create private open the Get Info panel. Then open the Sharing & Permissions panel, enter your user password if prompted, turn all of them to drop box only, then click the lock, users will now only be able to view this folder if they unlock the panel with your user password and then change the style.
View 20 Replies View RelatedI deleted the "hidden" private folder on my mac, but that still on trash. Now the big problems are:
- when I try to open Terminal to move the folder from the trash to my hard disk, appears a message that says: the administrator doesn't specified your shell with a legal value.
- I can't change the date and time;
- well almost nothing.
For some reason unknown to me, my "private" folder is visible. I've done all the "usual" things and even have an Automator action that shows and hides invisible files, but I just can't make it invisible again. Now this isn't really a BAD thing as I know how to poke around in there, but still... it's a mystery to me.
View 3 Replies View RelatedUgh. So I was cleaning out my HD with 'WhatSize' and saw the 'private folder', which was about 4.6 GB. Thinking nothing of it and also suspecting that this might be the folder responsible for the my auto-depleting harddrive I trashed it. Upon stupidly emptying the trash I found that some files were emptied while most of them survived. Noticing that I wasn't able to open iTunes or even reinstall it, I restarted the computer.
Now, I can't get into Snow Leopard and have to use Windows (I have Bootcamp). I tried doing the "ditto /volumes..." command in single-user mode, but it says it couldn't find my username. I tried looking up the username with the 'launch ctl load' command, but it can't find the Directory Services file. Is there any way I can get Snow Lepoard back without losing any space? I have a lot of important media that I would really like to keep (photos, films, music, etc.)
I moved my Mac HD's private folder to the trash not knowing that it stores thousands of crucial UNIX folders (one of which that stores the admin password). I haven't yet trashed it, but I can't move it back to its original location because when I try to do that Leopard asks for the admin password but the password doesn't exist anymore because it's been moved to the trash. Is there anyway I can remove the private folder from the Trash and put it back? Maybe some kind of Terminal command?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI deleted my private folder. It's still in the trash, and it's also in my applications folder if that makes a difference. I turned off my mac and now I can't boot it back up. I can boot into single user mode and tried entering some codes in there but I keep getting errors. I have a new Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard, and I have the install disk but I can't get the computer to start up with it.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI did search, because I recalled seeing a thread on this in the past, but mostly found threads about upgrading when you run out of space. I have an 80 gig harddrive, but it's almost full. I go through my folders, and see that music is about 7 gigs, photos is about 7 gigs, applications folder is 5 gigs, documents folder is 1 gig....at most I can account for perhaps 25 gigs of data. Where is the other 40 gigs coming from? Trash is emptied. Is there some simple way to list folders based on size or something to figure out what is taking up my harddrive space?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI accidentally trashed my private folder and then emptied my trash. I have looked into it and everyone has answers on how to reinstall it if I didn't empty the trash but the issue is I did empty the trash. My computer won't start up all the way as you would imagine. I have my disk and everything but I do not have all of my things backed up or archived.
My issue is I can easily reinstall Mac OS X 10.4 but I have some vital videos and footage for a video we are working on that I cannot deleted or take the chance of losing. Does anyone know a way I can back up the movie files or any way of doing anything of that sort? This is very important I do not have the tapes anymore with the raw footage on it so if I lose this footage pretty much our last year of work and filming is ruined and so is our release date in two weeks.
I'm not sure if it's ok to do this but is it possible to have the system stop writing in the the system.log? It's taking up a lot of space because and I want to stop it temporarily because for some reason it keeps rewriting lines every couple seconds.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a 250 Gb internal Hard drive. I started running out of space so I purchased a 750 Gb external Hard Drive and moved all my picutres, videos, etc. I freed up about 35Gb of space on my internal hard drive. I also cleared out my download folder. I hardly have any files left on the computer and after a few weeks I get the hard disk running low on free space error again. I checked the available space and I have less than a Gig. I don't know what is taking up the space. I have Time Capsule and am using Time Machine. I am running Lion.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI just ordered a new Macbook Pro (with Retina Display).It's my first MBP since 2007.I'm super excited about it, minus one glaring issue. My harddrive is the baseline 251 GB SSD. I've hardly used the thing besides loading some music and movies onto it. However, when I look at the'About this Mac' window, it says I'm using 51.89GB in Other.Compared to only 11GB in Movies and 2GB in Audio.It's hard for me to believe that the operating system takes up a whopping 50GB..How can I account for this Other section?
Info:
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), Mac OS X (10.7.4), 251 GB SSD
For some reason this is now visible in my hard drive's root. How do I hide it again? I don't wanna go near that thing!
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have some files on my desktop right now that I would like to secure from wondering eyes. Other people use my Macbook Pro from time to time and I don't want anyone to read these documents. Is there a way to create a folder/file that requires a password to gain entry to view the contents of this folder/file?
View 17 Replies View RelatedI have a strange "/private" folder in my root directory (Macintosh HD) after a Time Capsule restore today. The folder is ~5GB in size, and appears to have been created during the restore process. The files in the folder have strange-appearing "system" file type names. Can I safely delete this folder? Not sure why its there, but given its size, I'd prefer to delete it.
View 5 Replies View RelatedThey are taking up 200 GB of my hard drive. how I could stop this or if it is even safe to delete them?
Info:mini 1.1, Mac OS X (10.6.5)
OS X 10.5.6, it's a .sparsebundle file. Total capacity 30GB, taking up 30GB on disk. There are only 10GB of files on the image. Trash is empty. I've zeroed my hard drive, and the disk image, and checked Whatsize.
how do I know what's taking up space on my macbook pro's hard disk?
View 4 Replies View RelatedAll Timemachine backups stored on External HDD. Storage info is still showing 80GB Backup files on Laptop. How can I find and delete these backups so I free up space?
Info:
MacBookPro
I've only just got the macbook air 2012 with 64gb of space and now it seems that i have run out of space..Apparently i'm using 54gb and i just can't see how thats possible, because i've only download atleast 2 apps and got iphoto and imovie. Â
Also i haven't got mavericks because i don't think i have enough and i just don't see how i've run out already?? How can i check how much i have left and whats taking up all the space?
Im running outta space on my mac any programs you can recommend that tells you how much space different aps are taking up or files that arn't necessary?
View 1 Replies View RelatedThe Disk Utility command "erase free space" takes longer and longer over time. Now it seems to run forever. The time estimates 6 hours, but is not finished after 8 hours. Previously the time ranged from 30 minutes to an hour for the same machine and OS.
View 1 Replies View Related