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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Recovering free space
iScootMAC - Mar 24, 2006 - 11:31 am
I recently attempted to run the Erase Free Space command in Disk Utility in OS X v10.4.5. It hung near the end of the process where it said something like creating tempoary file. During the process, my Entourage 2004 gave me a message stating that my hard drive was full and that it needed to be closed until space was freed up.
I eventually force quit Disk Utility. I got info of my hard drive and noticed that there was no free space left! Before this I had about 19GB free.
I ran Disk Utility again, in hopes of running the Erase Free Space again. I did so and now I have 2GB free on my hard drive.
I probably should've let Disk Utility run as long as it needed, but during the process, the fans kicked into low gear, and then about 20 minutes later, went into high gear (this usually only happens when there's a rogue process running in the background that's taking up a lot of CPU). I had to use the Terminal to kill the process before the fans went back to quiet again.
It's a PowerBook G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) with 512MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive.
Is there any way to get rid of that temporary file(s) (wherever it/they is/are)? Or any way in general to recover all this temporarily used space?? I used Terminal to look around at any large temporary files, but could find none.
I've since tried running Disk Utility to repair permissions, but that did nothing helpful related to this problem. I've also tried running Onyx and Yasu to clear caches and do general maintenance. I have not yet rebooted the computer at all (partly in trying to test the stability of OS X in recovering from problems like this without using 3rd-party utilities or rebooting - I know, silly, but I'm crazy like that... if I can't come upon a solution, I will resort to rebooting and running something like DiskWarrior).
Any help is greatly appreciated!
I eventually force quit Disk Utility. I got info of my hard drive and noticed that there was no free space left! Before this I had about 19GB free.
I ran Disk Utility again, in hopes of running the Erase Free Space again. I did so and now I have 2GB free on my hard drive.
I probably should've let Disk Utility run as long as it needed, but during the process, the fans kicked into low gear, and then about 20 minutes later, went into high gear (this usually only happens when there's a rogue process running in the background that's taking up a lot of CPU). I had to use the Terminal to kill the process before the fans went back to quiet again.
It's a PowerBook G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) with 512MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive.
Is there any way to get rid of that temporary file(s) (wherever it/they is/are)? Or any way in general to recover all this temporarily used space?? I used Terminal to look around at any large temporary files, but could find none.
I've since tried running Disk Utility to repair permissions, but that did nothing helpful related to this problem. I've also tried running Onyx and Yasu to clear caches and do general maintenance. I have not yet rebooted the computer at all (partly in trying to test the stability of OS X in recovering from problems like this without using 3rd-party utilities or rebooting - I know, silly, but I'm crazy like that... if I can't come upon a solution, I will resort to rebooting and running something like DiskWarrior).
Any help is greatly appreciated!
av_man - Mar 25, 2006 - 6:06 pm
Hi Scott,
You might want to try the free program WhatSize to find out where all that space went. It sorts directories by size to you can find which directories are taking up the most space. You can download it here:
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/whatsize.dmg
Once you find the file you should be able to find a way to delete it. Let me know if that helps.
Stephen
You might want to try the free program WhatSize to find out where all that space went. It sorts directories by size to you can find which directories are taking up the most space. You can download it here:
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/whatsize.dmg
Once you find the file you should be able to find a way to delete it. Let me know if that helps.
Stephen
iScootMAC - Mar 26, 2006 - 10:07 am
Awesome! I'm at home right now, and the problem computer is at work, so I'll give it a try on Monday morning. That's the type of application I was hoping to find! I'll let you know what happens, thanks!
iScootMAC - Mar 27, 2006 - 7:57 am
I just uploaded a file (screen shot) of the WhatSize application and what it found of my hard drive... obviously, it didn't find the large file I was hoping for!
Notice on the left column? Capacity: 27.9GB; Used: 25.9GB; Available: 1.95GB. But the three largest folders on my drive are only 3.26GB, 1.36GB, and 1.75GB respectively.
It's a great utility and I'm going to keep it around. Any other ideas? Thanks!
Notice on the left column? Capacity: 27.9GB; Used: 25.9GB; Available: 1.95GB. But the three largest folders on my drive are only 3.26GB, 1.36GB, and 1.75GB respectively.
It's a great utility and I'm going to keep it around. Any other ideas? Thanks!
av_man - Apr 2, 2006 - 9:51 pm
Hi Scott,
Sorry for the silence, I've been away for a bit. I'm not really sure how to pursue the problem at this point since there is no file that seems to be taking up space. I would suggest resorting to your 3rd-party software (DiskWarrior) and see what that tells you. If that doesn't work, one thing that should work is to backup your haard drive to an external and wipe the internal drive completely. I like to do that about once a year anyway just to keep up with clutter and loose ends. If you would like I can send this back to the pool to see if anyone else has some ideas.
Stephen
Sorry for the silence, I've been away for a bit. I'm not really sure how to pursue the problem at this point since there is no file that seems to be taking up space. I would suggest resorting to your 3rd-party software (DiskWarrior) and see what that tells you. If that doesn't work, one thing that should work is to backup your haard drive to an external and wipe the internal drive completely. I like to do that about once a year anyway just to keep up with clutter and loose ends. If you would like I can send this back to the pool to see if anyone else has some ideas.
Stephen
ericl - Apr 4, 2006 - 11:41 am
I am a Storage consultant & there are books written on this subject.
First off, the intent of the "erase free space" is to prevent somebody from recovering deleted files (when you delete a file the data is left but the filesystem pointers to that data are removed), so this is a "security' feature not a disk-free-space-recovery feature.
If you had 19 GB free space before you ran this & have 2 Gb now, then you & diskutil have filled-up your disk with unwanted data. It is highly likely that this data is for internal use of the "diskutil" command, and therefore any "filesystem" utility may not find this data, as it could be in raw versus file format.
Your best bet is to contact Apple support to see if they have a solution; this situation requires internal Vendor proprietary info to fix. Tell them you aborted diskutil & now have much less free space than before you ran diskutil.
Your other choice is to back-up any files you need to keep, re-format your disk, re-install the O/S, then restore the files you backed-up.
Sorry for the bad news. To attempt to fix your problem I'd have to try to duplicate it & I don't have a test system like Apple support does.
Eric
First off, the intent of the "erase free space" is to prevent somebody from recovering deleted files (when you delete a file the data is left but the filesystem pointers to that data are removed), so this is a "security' feature not a disk-free-space-recovery feature.
If you had 19 GB free space before you ran this & have 2 Gb now, then you & diskutil have filled-up your disk with unwanted data. It is highly likely that this data is for internal use of the "diskutil" command, and therefore any "filesystem" utility may not find this data, as it could be in raw versus file format.
Your best bet is to contact Apple support to see if they have a solution; this situation requires internal Vendor proprietary info to fix. Tell them you aborted diskutil & now have much less free space than before you ran diskutil.
Your other choice is to back-up any files you need to keep, re-format your disk, re-install the O/S, then restore the files you backed-up.
Sorry for the bad news. To attempt to fix your problem I'd have to try to duplicate it & I don't have a test system like Apple support does.
Eric
iScootMAC - Apr 4, 2006 - 12:23 pm
Thanks very much for the insight into this problem. I still haven't rebooted or tried any 3rd-party disk repair utilities (uptime of 29 days). At some point I'll try to run some tests while booted to my external firewire hard drive, see what I find.
I do have access to Apple tech chat, so I may try that, too. I was just wondering what alternatives there were without rebooting (like I mentioned above, just for testing and learning, mostly). I don't have any real need for a lot of hard drive space, so this problem isn't affecting me at all.
When I do eventually figure it out, I'll reply back and let you guys know. For now, you can close this out, if you'd like. Thanks again!!
I do have access to Apple tech chat, so I may try that, too. I was just wondering what alternatives there were without rebooting (like I mentioned above, just for testing and learning, mostly). I don't have any real need for a lot of hard drive space, so this problem isn't affecting me at all.
When I do eventually figure it out, I'll reply back and let you guys know. For now, you can close this out, if you'd like. Thanks again!!
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