Changing harddrive size

[rr nmte]

Hello,

I usually keep a about 1.2 GB of free hard drive space on my G4 pb (1.5 GHz, PPC, 512MB DDR SDRAM, 80GB hdd).

However, of late, that number drops dramatically while I am using the computer for simple applications. It starts at 1.2 GB and then gets down to 400 MB while I am using Acrobat and MS Word (nothing too intensive). Restarting gets it back to the original 1.2 GB.

Is this the sign of a deteriorating hard drive? What would you recommend I do to reverse this? I have run disk utility programs and found no unusual disk repairs needed.

Thanks!

rr

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

It's a sign that virtual memory is being used, which is completely normal. When your computer "runs out of RAM", then some of that inactive RAM is swapped to the hard drive. Even if your computer has 32 gigabytes of RAM, virtual memory will still be "used" in the sense that Mac OS X will allocate some space on your hard drive "just in case."

As a rule of thumb, you need to keep about 15% to 20% of your total hard drive space free for virtual memory and to prevent your drive from filling up. I would suggest putting some stuff on an external hard drive, or think about upgrading to a bigger drive.