hard disk full?

V

veroi9

Registered
I have an 12" iBook G3 500mhz, 640MB, 14GB, currently running 10.3.8. I have about 4GB of space left on my hard disk... or so I should. Today all of a sudden its showing that I only have about 700MB free. I haven't added any more files/programs recently (let alone 3.5 gigs of files!).

When I first noticed this earlier today I was saving some pictures in Photoshop and it was giving me a message that my startup disk is almost full.

What's going on? What is suddenly taking up 3.5GB?

Thanks for any help!
 
There are several folders that could be taking up files.
First, with Safari open, go to the Safari Menu and select Empty cache.
Then go to the history menu and select clear history. This will clear up some room.

Photoshop has a temp file that is probably holding many files of past images. In order to fine the temp folder you will have to to a Find - Type in PhotoShop Temp, then add one more criteria - Kind - invisible.

Find will show you where it is, then click twice on that folder in the Find's bottom half. You will be brought to that folder where you can trash all the files in there.

Do you shut down your computer every night?
 
Also, Photoshop is a huge memory hog. It could be that you are using Photoshop a lot and never restarting, forcing your Mac to resort to virtual memory on the hard disk. Try restarting, if you haven't already.
 
I shut down every few days and restart often too. Today when I noticed that all this space mysteriously disappeared I restarted. That didn't help, so I shut down for a few minutes then started up again with no change. It still showed only 700MB free.

I don't think the cache or temp files could be taking up that much space. This literally happened overnight. I've had my iBook since 2001 and I'm always aware of how much space is taken up on the HD. I specifically remember Friday night seeing I had 4.12GB of free space on my HD.
 
ok I just found the problem. I was messing around the other night with this program called ScreenRecord that I downloaded a long time ago. I started 'recording' the desktop and couldn't get it to stop and I had to force my computer to shut down. I got so mad at the program that I actually deleted it afterwards. However it saved and hid a .mov file that was 3.41GB! I found it by doing a search for all files modified in the past 3 days.

Sorry I posted on the board for a problem I ended up fixing myself!
 
Don't be sorry. You actually helped us by helping yourself.

Also, if you shut down your computer every night, the routine maintenances are not being done.

Download and install Macaroni.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633

It will do those routines every time you start up.
 
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