I discovered through running my "What size" program that over 300gb of space is used up in my "volume" folder. I am a bit new to the mac and I do not know what this folder is for. I am guess by looking at it that it is some kind of back up thing, but I already back up onto an external drive, so i don't know what this is. Can i delete it? Thanks a bunch!!
300GB in my "volume" folder. What is it and how do i get rid of it?
- Thread starter crazypita
- Start date
Download OmniDiskSweeper for free to sort out what is taking up all the space. You can delete things from within OmniDiskSweeper. Be careful.
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/
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Run following command on terminal.app:
You see a list of disks, like (on my MacbookPro)
The first line is the main hard disk, second is some system directory (on Unix devices seem to be on /dev/ directory, like the hard disk is /dev/disk02s2). The two last are a CD-disk that happened to be on my Mac (I played Civilization IV last night) and my Lacie BIG external disk.
But the important thing is, they are on /Volumes directory. When you put a CD or external storage device on Mac, it is automatically tied to the system. They end up directory /Volumes, as a subdirectory whose name is the disk's (or CD's) label. If you view the subdirectory on the terminal.app (with ls command), you see the disk's content.
Ok, if you do not have any disks mounted, it might be that you had some disk before, but removed it and some program (or user) assumed it was there and wrote to the directory anyhow. Since the /Volumes directory is a subdirectory of the root directory / (which is mounted to the disk /dev/disk0s2 on my macbook pro), the content end up to the main disk, not the disk it was suppoced to end.
Code:
mountYou see a list of disks, like (on my MacbookPro)
Code:
/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowe)
..
/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/Civilization IV (hfs,..)
/dev/disk2s2 on /Volumes/LacieMacThe first line is the main hard disk, second is some system directory (on Unix devices seem to be on /dev/ directory, like the hard disk is /dev/disk02s2). The two last are a CD-disk that happened to be on my Mac (I played Civilization IV last night) and my Lacie BIG external disk.
But the important thing is, they are on /Volumes directory. When you put a CD or external storage device on Mac, it is automatically tied to the system. They end up directory /Volumes, as a subdirectory whose name is the disk's (or CD's) label. If you view the subdirectory on the terminal.app (with ls command), you see the disk's content.
Ok, if you do not have any disks mounted, it might be that you had some disk before, but removed it and some program (or user) assumed it was there and wrote to the directory anyhow. Since the /Volumes directory is a subdirectory of the root directory / (which is mounted to the disk /dev/disk0s2 on my macbook pro), the content end up to the main disk, not the disk it was suppoced to end.
What could have happened, for example, was that something (Finder, a script, something) tried to copy 300 GB to an attached harddrive (/Volumes/harddrivename), but the harddrive wasn't there, so the command "simply" wrote to /Volumes/harddrivename without there actually being anything, which would lead to writing to the system volume.
You were right. i isolated the volumes and checked the plist file and the time machine was writing my backups to my volumes folder. I had to set up another user for the security clearance to delete the files and then delete the plist file. thanks for you help. 320GB recovered!