OS X V10.7 Lion :: Free Space Fluctuates Randomly
Jun 12, 2012
Since last night, my iMac (early 2010, OS X 10.7.4) keeps reporting random amounts of free space. Normally it should be about 700 GB free, but looking at the drive right now and it's 332 GB free, now 337 GB free, 26 GB, 173 GB, 0 B, 645 GB... Whenever it hits zero, I get the out-of-disk-space warning.
I've looked for other people having this issue, and found a few, but the only "solutions" suggested were to delete things to free space, which obviously isn't the issue. I've checked /var/vm, ~/Library/Caches, /var/log, Console.app, and Activity Monitor looking for anything misperforming, but nothing appears out of the ordinary. The issue persists through a restart, even when nothing running (holding shift on login). I did a clean reinstall of OS X last week, but only started last night. The only possible trigger is that the Guest User was logged in for the first time last night, and the issue started after switching back to the main user.
Info:iMac, Aluminum-glass
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Mar 20, 2009
Yesterday I apparently interrupted Disk Utility when it was erasing free space, which was far bigger than the used space on my beloved black Macbook. Apparently the free space, because the program was interrupted, is seen as one honking big file.
This morning, the disk utility tells me that I have zero free space. Verify says I do not need repair. I checked because of all my sudden problems (I am unable to save anything to the laptop, unable to cut-and-paste . . . and unable to erase free space again since there officially isn't any, etc.).
Trash is empty.
I tried (based on advice in another thread) to reboot with the installation disk so as to use its disk utility program, but the installation disk menu offers "install" etc. but not (as far as I can tell) just access to its disk utility.
I plugged in my Timemachine external drive [WD MyBook], but the most recent "save" there has the "restore" button greyed out. That's scary.
I'm willing to do a complete re-install if necessary, but I hope that one of you has a simpler solution that will simply get my free space back.
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Mar 20, 2012
how to free up a lot of space on the startup HD?
Info:
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011)
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Apr 9, 2012
How to free up space on my macbook air?
Info:
MacBook Air
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May 1, 2012
I recently downloaded the iDefrag demo and it reports that my files are 0.7% fragmented but the free space on my disk is 75% fragmented, what does this mean? Should I be concerned and should I defrag the drive? My mac seems to take forever to boot up these days and programs open very slowly. I work with quite large Photoshop files regularly, but my scratch disk is set to a different drive to the system disk.Â
Any recommendations for the best way to learn about troubleshooting the Mac would be appreciated, as I'm keen to avoid any down time due to failures of any kind (I don't mind investing some money for the right training). The area I'm particularly interested in is restoring a system, if there are certain corrupt files, but doing this without affecting all the third party program files etc. I use carbon copy cloner to keep an exact copy of my system disk but am worried that if the system files becomes corrupt, I'm just making a copy of the corruption onto another disk!Â
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Jun 25, 2014
Need to free up about 30G on my mbp (Mountain Lion). iPhoto library is about 48G. iTunes LIbrary is about 34G. I want to backup to a Flash drive (64G) either:
1) some from each or
2) back up one of them.Â
how would I access the backed up data?Â
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Apr 21, 2012
I just cleaned out my HDD on my 2008 MBP and am still getting about the same amount of available space as I did when I started. I must have cleaned anywhere from 50-150GB of stuff from the hard drive and no space has been freed up. I ran a scan with my trusty Daisydick which has never let me down and it showd what I thought to be a very much more accurate amout of free space now but the system says otherise as dones another scanner. Also I cant seem to figure out for the life of me what this extra 99GB of "other" space is. Below is a link to the screenshot I took. I really try to keep things very light and tidy on here.
[URL]
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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Mar 14, 2012
Up until recently, I had my MacBook Pro's hard drive in 3 partitions: 2 with Mac OS X, and one as a Bootcamp partition. I recently decided that I no longer needed to Mac OS X partitions, so after backing up all the files in one of the partitions I went into Disk Utility and deleted that partition, hoping I could expand the other one to take the free space. Unfortunately, now I have this area listed as "free space," and while I can make another partition in that space, I can't expand my existing partition to take advantage of it. Is there a way for me to get this space back, or perhaps merge 2 partitions together? I'm just afraid of losing ~400GB of space.
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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May 14, 2012
I am deleting large amounts of files / directories with 10s of GB of disk usage from my internal hard disk.Then I empty the trash.But I don't get more free space on my hard disk! I am not using File Vault.(I also believe that my file system is not corrupt.) This is quite annoying, since I am still unable to copy stuff on my internal hard disk, but given the amount of files I have just deleted, I should be able to do so.
PS:MacBook Pro, 10.7.3, very recent model, 500 GB internal hard disk.
Info:iPhone 4S, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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Jun 6, 2012
Get Info overstates the free space on my boot drive. Disk Utility reports ~295 GB; Get Info reports ~467 GB out of 500.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Jun 11, 2012
The Finder window shows that I have 302GB of harddrive space remaining, out of 500GB. The Activity Monitor and Disk Utility show I have 240GB space remaining, and my System Profiler shows I have 239GB remaining. I just deleted a bunch of old TV shows off of iTunes (about 40GB worth) to open up some space, but only the Finder changed (up to 302GB from 260GB) but the Activity Monitor, Disk Utility, and System Profiler haven't changed.Â
Now, I'll assume the Finder is showing the correct amount of space, but I'm wondering why the other utilites are showing the incorrent amount of space. I have a feeling maybe something was screwed up when I created a 50GB Windows 7 partition through Boot Camp a couple months ago.Â
I've attempted to Repair Disk through the Disk Utility and it says everything looks fine. Any solutions to this minor inconvenience? Or at least an answer as to why this is happening?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Jun 21, 2012
My USB thumb drive won't update the amount of free space. It's constantly saying it is full, even if I delete the files on it. Â
It's the same on all of the thumb drives I use. Â It there a "refresh" button - to get it to update the amount of data on it?Â
I transfer large video files between an iMac and PC computer. Â
Info:
iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, iPhone OS 3.1.2, Mac OS X Lion 10.7
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Jun 23, 2012
My startup disc is full. I have 182 GB of 'Other' that I cannot locate or delete to free up space.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Jul 1, 2012
After emptying the trash, I've noticed that Lion does not see the additional free space until after doing a reboot, and even after that it takes a long time for it to find all the new free space. Anybody know what's wrong with the trash system?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Jan 19, 2009
I only have like 8 gb left on my macbook's hard drive. Are there any programs I can run that will defrag/free up space? How much does Apple Store typically charge to upgrade a hard drive? How easy is it to do myself?
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Jun 14, 2012
I need to get more space on my start up disk. How do I free up space by transferring to one of my back up drives?
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Apr 23, 2009
I managed to interrupt the computer when I selected the "Erase Free Space" option. I had 0GB left on the computer and had to cancel almost all of the applications. I Googled and found that /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems should locate the file when entered in Terminal, but whenever I try that, it just says "Permission denied." It only asked for a password once, and when I tried entering it, it said that there was no such file. I located a few other temporary files and deleted those, and also tried making empty folders on the desktop to empty the trash. It freed up 6.7 GB, but there's still a lot of space missing. I'm not sure what else to try or how to get the space back.
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Mar 25, 2012
Out of the blue tonight, my Mac Mini running OS X Lion will no longer secure erase my empty space. Whenever I try to do so, I get the following error:Â "Secure Erase Free Space failed with the error:Â Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup"Â I've rebooted to no avail. I also did a complete shut down and boot up, but the error persists.
Info:
Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Dec 15, 2010
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at "Zero KB" of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
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Dec 15, 2010
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at "Zero KB" of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
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Feb 22, 2009
I have a huge external drive. I just deleted some things that I don't want anymore. But I still have a lot of stuff I want on the drive so I can't format it and move on. I have to keep a lot of files on there.
How can I erase and zero out the free space that is left when I deleted those files?
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Jul 1, 2009
I just got this mac, and i formatted the drive. It is formated to Mac OS Extended (journaled) Im trying to install Yahoo messenger. (it is doing this with all other programs im trying; limewire, thunderbird, opera.) I keep getting the message "The item "Yahoo! Messenger" cannot be copied because there is not enough space."It also says this when i try to pull a file off an 8 GB ScanDisk Flash Drive.
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Aug 4, 2009
So today I was exploring my Mac Mini and made it so I can see how much space is left on my hard drive under the Macintosh HD icon. I saw that it says 111.47GB....11GB Free! Wow, I didn't know I used so much space. I don't really have enough money for a new hard drive. I am wondering if there is any freeware program to tell me where my hard drive space is going. What should I do to gain back some hard drive space?
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Sep 4, 2009
I've read that 10.6 frees up space when it is installed. I'm currently on 10.4, PowerPC. Will 10.5 free up hard drive space if I install it? Or will it use about the same amount as 10.4? Also, is 10.5 now on sale because its "old"?
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Aug 17, 2010
I have an iMac with 38 GB Hard Disk.I have Mac Leopard 10.5.8 installed.
The available free space( when I click on Hard Disk symbol and then information) shows 11.5 GB and 26.5 GB used space.
When I manually add up what I have on all my files it comes to only 21.5 GB Where is the other 5 GB?
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Jun 30, 2012
I have a Mac Mini 500GB and have 440GB of movies on it. I have deleted the files from the iTunes media folder and have emptied the trash but the storage information still says that my hard disk is almost at capacity with 440GB of movies...all of the files from the iTunes folder are stored elsewhere on an external hard drive and I have iTunes talking to the exernal hard drive so I really want to free up the space on the mac mini.Â
I dont know what else to do because I cant even find any mv4 files and when I search for files over 1GB, the only thing that comes up is iPhoto.Â
Info:
Mac mini, Other OS
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Sep 27, 2010
Anyone know if it's possible to clean up downloaded updates from programs on Snow Leopard?
When Adobe downloads updates for Photoshop or Acrobat for instance...after the update get's installed does the file get deleted or it stays somewhere on the system.
Same goes for Mac OSX updates...do they leave a copy of say an Itunes update on the system after it updates it...or does it get automatically deleted from the system.
I'd like to clean out any useless downloads that just sit there taking up space after they have updated the Apps on my Mac.
So does anyone know where to find these downloaded updates and if it's possible to remove them without any issues?
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Oct 24, 2010
How much free space is there on a 64gig out of the box?
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Dec 9, 2010
I'm always running out of my Disk space, because of page in and page out. I obviously need to upgrade to 8 Gb, but in the meantime, I'm going to have increase my free space of the hard drive.
How much free disk space is recommened for OS X?
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Aug 30, 2006
I was just wondering if any of you knew of a program that can wipe the free space on a hard drive (overwriting with zeroes is all that's necessary, even if it's not that secure.)
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