Hidden files or volumes eating my disk space - Help pls or volumes with Leopard

denis_jamesdenis_james
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi everyone.

I'm new to this forum and wondered if anyone could assist me.

Have just installed Leopard on a 2 year old Mac Pro and have just noticed a weird thing. My disk size is 250 gigabytes and the system tells me I only have 35 gigabytes left. Nothing odd about that I hear you say except that I can only account for and identify about 100 gig being used for files, programs etc.

I've measured every directory under "Hard Disk" and just can't see what's eating up 120 gig of space.

Any ideas as to what might be causing this and how I might reclaim the space would be really very much appreciated.

Thanks

Denis

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    shadowshadow Posts: 373member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by denis_james View Post


    Hi everyone.

    I'm new to this forum and wondered if anyone could assist me.

    Have just installed Leopard on a 2 year old Mac Pro and have just noticed a weird thing. My disk size is 250 gigabytes and the system tells me I only have 35 gigabytes left. Nothing odd about that I hear you say except that I can only account for and identify about 100 gig being used for files, programs etc.

    I've measured every directory under "Hard Disk" and just can't see what's eating up 120 gig of space.

    Any ideas as to what might be causing this and how I might reclaim the space would be really very much appreciated.

    Thanks

    Denis



    As far as I understand you checked you home directory and it is fine.



    My advice:

    Launch Terminal (it is in /Applications/Utilities). Type the following:



    ls -al /



    This will show all directories on you hard drive. Now, from Finder, open a window, select Go->Go to Folder (or press Command-Shift-G). In the text field type the hidden directory to check it's content. Example: /tmp . Repeat for all invisible directories. For some of the folders you will not have permission to read/view the content and you may need more help to check them. Check those you can access first.



    WARNING: Some of the hidden directories are EXTREMELY important! I would advise to identify which directory has a huge size and come back for further instructions!
  • Reply 2 of 6
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by denis_james View Post


    Hi everyone.

    I'm new to this forum and wondered if anyone could assist me.

    Have just installed Leopard on a 2 year old Mac Pro and have just noticed a weird thing. My disk size is 250 gigabytes and the system tells me I only have 35 gigabytes left. Nothing odd about that I hear you say except that I can only account for and identify about 100 gig being used for files, programs etc.

    I've measured every directory under "Hard Disk" and just can't see what's eating up 120 gig of space.

    Any ideas as to what might be causing this and how I might reclaim the space would be really very much appreciated.

    Thanks

    Denis



    The application "WhatSize" is great for finding out where all the space has gone.

    I discovered that the .Mac iDisk cache was growing daily. Seems to be a Leopard bug.



    C,
  • Reply 3 of 6
    sherman homansherman homan Posts: 167member
    Log files are the usual culprit. Sometimes they don't auto-purge and they grow to multi gig size. Carniphage mentions whatsize a great program.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    tontontonton Posts: 14,067
    One thing you should do is:



    Hit command-F (Find)

    Enter "Size is Greater than 50000 KB"

    "Visibility is Visible or Invisible"

    And just delete the files you don't want.



    Watch out for your mailbox files and iPhoto Library and thumb files. Other than those and maybe some other library files you'll probably recognize, there aren't any system files that are vital that are that big.



    You can easily see which porno videos you can ditch, which lossless audio files you should convert to AAC and which Photoshop tutorial files are a waste of space. You can also see if there's a bloated cache file that was forgotten by some errant program.



    Should clear up space quickly and easily.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tonton View Post


    One thing you should do is:



    Hit command-F (Find)

    Enter "Size is Greater than 50000 KB"

    "Visibility is Visible or Invisible"

    And just delete the files you don't want.



    If it's this problem:

    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306904



    The space is used by lots of small files. Mine was up to around 60Gig when I killed it!



    C.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    denis_jamesdenis_james Posts: 2member
    Thanks everyone - Whatsize solved my problem. Appears I'd created a backup volume under the VOL directory on the hard disk instead of my backup disk.

    Cheers - you've saved my bacon....

    Denis
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