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TICKET ARCHIVE -> HD and space

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 1:40 am

Greetings macosx, i'm trying to figure out why my 80 gig hard drive is almost full.

My audio projects, including samples and soft synths, take up about 20 gigs. 25 tops.

When i get info on my user folder though, "Christopher", it says 37 gigabytes! This might explain the huge amount of space taken up.

Thing is, when i go in and start getting info on each individual folder, most of them have next to nothing. Library is 1.4 gigs, but there's nothing to account for 37 gigs! Why does it say this?

Is it because there is overlap between the other stuff on my Hard Drive, even if they're not in the Christopher folder? Does it somehow count those too?

Thanks so much!

philippe99 - Jul 27, 2006 - 5:42 am

Hi and welcome to macosx.com

May I suggest you to download the free DiskInventory
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...nventoryx.html
and use it to trach the very big files in your drive.

I would also download some tools like Onyx or Cocktail to clean caches.

And by the way, no iMovie project with a ton of stuffs in iMovie trash can ?

Regards
Philippe

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 9:16 am

Dear Phillippe,

Thank you for responding. Um, i searched for iMovie, and checked each folder that came up. Doesn't seem to be anything huge there.

I have downloaded and am starting up DiskInventory right now, as you suggested.

Tell me though, about this user folder, "Christopher": why does it show a whopping 38 gigabytes, when the largest folders i can find exist OUTSIDE of the user folder (That is: Applications, and Applications OS 9) ?

Is there an "overlap" with user folders? Do they include stuff in the general Mac Hard Drive as well as what's in the folder?

Or does it imply there is a lot of info stuck somewhere in that user folder, and i just need to locate it. (This is what i hope is the case).


Thanks again.

philippe99 - Jul 27, 2006 - 9:58 am

Christopher folder contains all the data relative to this user:
* Documents
* Preferences files for the applications Christopher is running
* Plug-ins Christopher has downloded for his browser, Garaband, ...
* Movies, Iphoto library and iTunes library related to him
* The Public and Shared foleder used to exchange with other users on the same machine.

No, Christopher folder does not include duplicate data from global system: this is a complete independant folder which is zipped when you remove the user from the accounts and which does not interfere with other accounts.

Philippe

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 10:35 am

Thank you. Okay then, there's something up. This folder has WAY too much information in it. I've downloaded a fair amount of stuff on Limewire. I've got full length concerts, music videos. But the total Shared folder is only 4 gigs. This doesn't explain 37 gigs! Could LimeWire have left stuff somewhere that is hidden or something? It's not the "Incomplete" folder; that is empty.

What else, do you know, could be in my user folder that would be taking up so much space?


Thanks so much, Phillippe.

philippe99 - Jul 27, 2006 - 11:01 am

As far as I know -and i use Frostwire which is a clone of LW-, there is no hidden big files in such p2p stuff


What about Christopher > Library > Logs folder ?

Philippe

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 11:15 am

Thank you Phillippe. No, only about 800k in Logs folder. I can account for about 5 or 6 gigs of the 31 (31 now, not 37) gigs in this User folder.

I would love to find out where the remainder is. It must be hiding somewhere.

Last night i tried going through each folder one by one and getting info. There were no big surprises. I wasn't able to find the big chunk of mystery info. It must be there though.

Any other ideas? Is there someone else you can ask who might have an idea? Thank you again for your help!

philippe99 - Jul 27, 2006 - 12:45 pm

Do you use DiskInventoy for scanning ?
Have you run Onyx to clean basic -do not touch system- caches ?

Use WhatSize
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php
to discover if hidden files do not eat you space.
The sole occurence of a hidden file eating space I know -except log files or system swap space- is due to badly pgmed driver for a DSL USB modem -but was a french release of the driver-

Philippe

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 4:37 pm

Hi Phillippe. I downloaded WhatSize and am using it. An interesting thing has happened, after i told Onyx to clean caches, etc. The User folder now has only 15 gigs in it instead of 31. And yet, the Mac HD says there's only about 7 gigs free, which is roughly the same amount as before.

in other words, it doesn't seem to be registering that 15 gigs has been freed up. I tried restarting already, that didn't seem to change it.

Any idea what this is about? Thank you!


Christopher

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 4:38 pm

Hi Phillippe. I downloaded WhatSize and am using it. An interesting thing has happened, after i told Onyx to clean caches, etc. The User folder now has only 15 gigs in it instead of 31. And yet, the Mac HD says there's only about 7 gigs free, which is roughly the same amount as before.

in other words, it doesn't seem to be registering that 15 gigs has been freed up. I tried restarting already, that didn't seem to change it.

Any idea what this is about? Thank you!


Christopher

p.s. sorry for the duplicate. i messed something up submitting this. thanks.

G3User - Jul 27, 2006 - 6:07 pm

Now it says it has 19 gigs! This is pretty wacky. I wonder if i need to run something like Norton and "wipe free space". Thanks.

philippe99 - Jul 28, 2006 - 3:16 am

NOOOOOO please, no Norton stuff on your Mac ... or be prepared to the worst...

Symantec has discontinued their products (except antivirus) on the Mac platform

So whatever you like, but not Norton....

???????

Now, which the free space available on MacHd ?
By the way, ..
* whuch OS do you run ?
* which RAM size

I asks this bec ause sytem swap space can be also responsible for forgotten big swap files, while normally the system will clean this file when shutdown
Swap file are file on a disk used as a memory because the running applications cannot find enough RAM, so applications take "RAM on disk"

In general, in Panther or Tiger, one can say that swap file can reach the 4 x RAM_size board

Running Adobe products, Office, ... can create more swap files

But normally, these files are cleaned when shutdowing the machine. But yes, sometimes, the system can loose "contact" with these files.

So now, what is the situation ??
Phil

G3User - Jul 28, 2006 - 9:24 pm

Hi Phil. Um (sheepish look), i installed Norton 8 last night, and it's caused me nothing but trouble. Sucks. i just came to find your message just now, and just after i scoured my hard drive for everything that says Norton and trashed it. Very interesting. Funny.

You were right!

Tell me please Phillippe, even though i trashed everything from the finder associated with Norton, i think there may be extensions Nortion installed as well. When i start back up, it tells me such and such wasn't installed properly. I know it has to do with Norton.

Is there a way to determine which System extensions are associated with/created by Norton? I want to delete everything Norton.

I'm going to answer your questions in the next response...

G3User - Jul 28, 2006 - 9:27 pm

Hey. Um, Mac OS X version 10.4.7

Memory: 1.75 GB

This is interesting about the swap files. I don't know how you ever learned all this stuff. I don't know if it's true with me. i can say that Adobe Reader just quit on me. It won't launch. Version 5. I downloaded 7 from Adobe, but have to download it again because there was something wrong with the installer.

I use Microsoft Office a lot. I don't know if that helps you. I have quite a bit of memory, so these swap files are not as likely on my machine?

Thanks. Talk soon,


Chris

philippe99 - Jul 29, 2006 - 7:04 am

(1) about Norton
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02110814042611
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...f&view=ppfdocs


(2) about your size problem
Do you have the opportunity to browse your machine with Whatsize ?

Philippe

philippe99 - Jul 29, 2006 - 9:05 am

About swap files (related to virtual memory; Utilities/ActivityMonitor, System memory tab, 'VM' field)

On my G5 Tiger 1G Ram, I'm encoding video while I write this.
Except my browser, my video editing tool is eating 95% of RAM.
My VM (swap file) is reaching now, 10.5GB...

Philippe

G3User - Jul 29, 2006 - 3:37 pm

Hi Phillippe. Yes, i have browsed my machine with Whatsize. It was very informative. It shows in color what kind of file and indicates the size.

About swap files, are you suggesting i might have them hanging around then, unattached to their original purpose (creating extra ram via the hard drive)? If so, how would i go about removing them? You think Whatsize could identify them.

Appreciate all your help,


Christopher

philippe99 - Jul 30, 2006 - 3:06 am

They're in the System top level 'var' (hidden) folder

/var/vm

They're name 'swapfile0', swapfile1', ..

The basic maintenances scripts (Onyx, macjanitor or Cokctail) clean them if necessary

They're a part of your system, do not delete them.
If the system requires that these files climb to 20G, they have to go to this size.

But, what about the other files ? Have you sclaed down your Christopher folder size ?

Phil

G3User - Aug 1, 2006 - 4:21 pm

Hey, Phillippe. Well that's the thing. The Christopher folder is the one that seems to fluctuate. I brought it from over 30 gigs, according to Apple's get info, to 15. But the total freed space on the hard drive was only a difference of about 4 gigs. ? Also, i don't know where all that bulk is coming from. I can account for some of that, but 15 seems like much more than i thought was in it.

Do you think there might be "detached", no longer relevant swap files somewhere on my HD? Maybe in that folder?

Also, from within Whatsize, is there a way to look at just a folder and analyze each file for size, rather than the whole HD? Thanks so much for your ongoing help, Phillippe.

aurevoir,


Christopher

G3User - Aug 1, 2006 - 5:43 pm

I take that back, Phillippe. I did get info for every folder in Christopher, and the 15 gigs is accounted for. Music, desktop, etc.

I guess i'll have to back up and delete some audio projects, and audio related stuff.

I have two external hard drives. I'll copy each file redundantly, and start erasing some stuff. I still have like ten gigs on my Mac drive, but i need more than that to run at optimum and not have to worry. Thanks very much,


Christopher

philippe99 - Aug 2, 2006 - 2:51 am

Well, 10 G free on 80G available is, for me, the minimum ratio, but one can live with that.
Ideally, 1/4 of the total space as free is the ratio.

Was happy to help you on this issue, Christopher. Good luck in your "summer cleaning" and thank you again for using macosx.com

Regards
Philippe