I have OS X 10.6.1 running on an Intel MacBook. From time to time, for reasons of security, I use the disk repair utility to to a one-pass 'erase free space' on my hard drive.
However, in the past (when I was using earlier versions of OS X), I used to get puzzling 'disk is almost full' messages as the process completed. All I had to do was click 'OK', and the process went to completion without any problem.
Today however I did an 'erase free space', and the thing actually told me that my disk WAS full ... and indeed it was (as I found out when I checked it with Activity Monitor after trying and failing to save work in open applications! Yet the hard drive was only about 1/3 full at the start of the process.
Since the disk utility was hung, I tried pressing 'skip' to get it to abort the process, which it did only with some reluctance and after several tries. When that was done, I had a 2/3 empty hard drive again.
What's going wrong here? Frankly, I don't feel like taking the risk of filling up my disk like this ...
However, in the past (when I was using earlier versions of OS X), I used to get puzzling 'disk is almost full' messages as the process completed. All I had to do was click 'OK', and the process went to completion without any problem.
Today however I did an 'erase free space', and the thing actually told me that my disk WAS full ... and indeed it was (as I found out when I checked it with Activity Monitor after trying and failing to save work in open applications! Yet the hard drive was only about 1/3 full at the start of the process.
Since the disk utility was hung, I tried pressing 'skip' to get it to abort the process, which it did only with some reluctance and after several tries. When that was done, I had a 2/3 empty hard drive again.
What's going wrong here? Frankly, I don't feel like taking the risk of filling up my disk like this ...