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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Imac Disk Full

bluepunk - Feb 12, 2008 - 12:25 pm

I am new to the Mac Seen. Late Summer 2007 i made switch and got a 13.3 Macbook and a New IMac. I have have no problems (up to now) and have loved it.

Recently I went to update my Imac (an aluminum one) and an error message came up that stated that there was not enough room on my start up disk to download the update. When I check how much hard disk space was use I was astonished to find that almost my entire hd (over 300 GB) was full. I don’t have many videos, many photo, or on over abundance of music. I have recently up garaged to leopard and open a .dot Mac account. And use the sync feature working between my Macbook and Imac but that it. I am a bit lost on what to do. There is no defrag feature on a Mac and for the life of me I have no idea what to do.

Any thoughts or advice?

earthsaver - Feb 12, 2008 - 2:00 pm

There actually is a defrag feature on the Mac. It's built into the system and runs in the background, and probably wouldn't help in this case if it was a separate utility. However, there may be a software problem with your hard disk.

Try opening Disk Utility, choosing your startup disk volume (Macintosh HD, unless you've renamed it), and click Verify Disk. If problems are found, the simplest solution is to restart and hold Shift until the gray Apple appears. The computer will run the disk repair routine and leave you in Safe Boot mode. You can test Software Update from there and restart to get back to normal.

- Ben

bluepunk - Feb 14, 2008 - 2:58 pm

I ran the disk utility and found some repairs that were needed. However my HD is almost full and i can not deem to locate what file is taking up all the room.

earthsaver - Feb 14, 2008 - 3:12 pm

I suggest you frame your search this way:View a Finder window as a List and enable Calculate Folder Sizes in its View Options. Now, you can actively see how much disk space is taken by various folders and files and search for the largest sizes. If you have room for a couple MB download, you can use OmniDiskSweeper to perhaps even more easily find what you seek.

bluepunk - Feb 15, 2008 - 3:17 pm

I used OmniDiskSweeper and found the file which is causing my problem. It is located in the library in the FileSync folder and looks tied to my .mac account. it is taking up 236 GB what should i do. Can i delete it?

earthsaver - Feb 15, 2008 - 5:05 pm

You might want to start by turning off iDisk Sync in .Mac Preferences. You should also be able to safely delete the contents of FileSync. If you're using Leopard and Time Machine, you might want to exclude your iDisk from your backup. See this hint.

bluepunk - Feb 16, 2008 - 10:07 am

I deleted the large file in my FileSync Folder and all is working fine. Thanks!