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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Harddrive malfunctioning?

PoopaAnski - Aug 11, 2008 - 12:36 pm

Good afternoon,

Last night I noticed that I somehow used (lost?) 20 GB of storage. For the life of me, I can't find what has taken up so much of that space. I've gone through applications numerous times and looked for individual files, but with no luck.

I decided this morning to check the Disk utility and after I initiated the "repair" it came back negative. However, before I check out I wanted to verify permissions and it came back that there was an error and that the Hard drive was damaged!

Presently, I'm doing a clean erase on the hd and it's the 7x pass. The harddrive is a new one I installed about 6 months ago: it's a 160GB/ 7200 rpm which is essentially 149BGB working harddrive. 2 night ago, I had 99GB free now, all of a sudden it's 81GB. What the hell happened?

Does anyone have any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Andre

PoopaAnski - Aug 11, 2008 - 1:37 pm

Here is what the Disc Utility read out says:

"Invalid volume file count" --in red

"(It should be 755638 instead of 755639)" --in black

"Invalid volume directory count" --in red

"(It should be 159355 instead of 159354) -- in black.

Does this make any sense?

RAMPCHECK - Aug 14, 2008 - 1:00 am

Greetings,

The invalid file count is a minor error.. Not likely to account for that much missing space.

Has the computer drained the battery during sleep recently? If so thats likely where it went. -> When the computer is sleeping (or awake) and the battery gets low enough that it can no longer run, the system will dump the entire contents of the ram to the drive.

Since the system does not know how much it will need at any given time or for how long, it starts with around 2 to 10GB of space.

This should clear itself out after some time, if not then the OS is misreading the amount of space free on the drive (possible but not likely).

PoopaAnski - Aug 14, 2008 - 8:51 am

Good morning, Rampcheck

The other night I was doing a lot of work with Photoshop and Illustrator before I realized that I had kicked/ pulled out the a/c plug. It had gone down to something like 20% before it started beeping.

"the system will dump the entire contents of the ram to the drive."
-So, it will restore that missing amount, you're telling me. I don't understand-- wouldn't the harddrive say somewhere-- here's X amount of information in a temp bin or holding file? I'm concerned because about 6 months or so ago, I swapped out the Apple issued 80GB/5400 rpm for a 160 GB/ 7200 rpm drive and I was wondering is this new drive acting up.

About the "invalid file count"-- how do I repair that or is that something that'll correct itself over time. Should I reinstalling the OSX operating system?

Thanks,
Andre

RAMPCHECK - Aug 14, 2008 - 1:17 pm

Yes, the missing space may come back, when the system dumps to the hard drive it creates several files to store the items in.

The incorrect file count should be able to be corrected with the disk utility (booted from the CD) or restart and hold the shift key - this takes you into safe boot and runs the repair disk.

Try either of those two steps and let me know, at this point I would not reinstall OS X

PoopaAnski - Aug 14, 2008 - 1:40 pm

I'll do a safe reboot, but what my concern is about the missing space. How do I account for that? Is that information doubled on the harddrive? I need some kind of assurance that the hd is not damaged in some way. Is there something else you may suggest?

RAMPCHECK - Aug 14, 2008 - 2:50 pm

If your looking for assurance that the drive is not damaged boot to the install CD, run the disk utility. Check the SMART status... If it says verified, the drive is fine.

The missing space sounds like the temp files, make sure the SMART status does not say " FAILED" or "FAILING"