Space not being made after deleting files

dave17lax · #1 June 30th, 2005, 02:27 PM

I only just recently was able to find time to install Tiger, and in doing so get some long overdue maintainance done on my mac. After deleting a bunch of old apps and files, plus a user that wasn't being used anymore, I did an Update- install of Tiger. This pretty much capped my harddrive, but for various reasons I did not want to do a clean install and was ready to go in and delete lots more stuff.

OK now here's the problem, I had about 700mb left on my hard drive, and began the process of deleting files. Funny thing: After running a few programs to make sure they work under Tiger, I noticed that I'm down to Zero KB available...Sure swap files, right? Well I have continued deleting files, about 500mb more, but everytime I empty the trash it continues to say Zero KB available.

Is the upgrade from Panther to Tiger really this bad? I was able to run fine with my hard drive almost full in Panther..now all of a sudden the OS is using only 500 of my 832 mb of RAM, but is feasting on my delicious HD space!!

bobw · #2 July 1st, 2005, 07:55 AM

Have you restarted?

MisterMe · #3 July 1st, 2005, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave17lax

I only just recently was able to find time to install Tiger, and in doing so get some long overdue maintainance done on my mac. After deleting a bunch of old apps and files, plus a user that wasn't being used anymore, I did an Update- install of Tiger. This pretty much capped my harddrive, but for various reasons I did not want to do a clean install and was ready to go in and delete lots more stuff.

OK now here's the problem, I had about 700mb left on my hard drive, and began the process of deleting files. Funny thing: After running a few programs to make sure they work under Tiger, I noticed that I'm down to Zero KB available...Sure swap files, right? Well I have continued deleting files, about 500mb more, but everytime I empty the trash it continues to say Zero KB available.

Is the upgrade from Panther to Tiger really this bad? I was able to run fine with my hard drive almost full in Panther..now all of a sudden the OS is using only 500 of my 832 mb of RAM, but is feasting on my delicious HD space!!

Your "problem" is the normal and expected behavior of MacOS X. Don't delete the files that you use. Run OnyX to delete your old cache and what not files. You will free up a substantial amount of HD space.

Randman · #4 July 1st, 2005, 10:06 AM

Also, do you have FileVault on?

ex2bot · #5 July 1st, 2005, 12:30 PM

It's a bad idea to operate with your hard drive almost full. Acc. to Micromat, you risk data loss. They recommend 10% free. Plus, your machine needs space for its swap files.

Doug

brianleahy · #6 July 1st, 2005, 12:54 PM

You have, I hope, emptied your trash?

**Captain Code** · #7 July 1st, 2005, 01:15 PM

There are some programs that are incompatible with Tiger which would fill up log files in /var/log until the disk space was completely consumed. This might be the problem you're having, but someone else will have to tell you the programs because I can't recall which ones were doing it.

Tiger uses a lot more virtual memory than Panther did. This might be your problem. I see that most of it has to do with the Dashboard Widgets that take up about 200MB of VM each.

Clivey · #8 July 1st, 2005, 01:35 PM

Mate of mine had (sounds like) a similar problem... he emptied the trash and the available HD space went DOWN not up as expected.
Booting in Single user mode (Command+S at startup chime) and running the fsck command (syntax is provided on boot up) - solved the problem.
I'll add that on another machine, where NO disk space was available, I noted that the cron scripts weren't running for some reason - forcing them to run under sudo solved that one.
HTH