Loosing series amount of gigs

S

swiftysoitiz

Registered
ok over the last few days my harddrive has went from 98 gig free , down to 75 , then 39 right down to 3 gig , im not d/l anything . have not installed anything except snow leopard , have rebooted sevral times , each time it shows a diff size of free gig . i run Calm XV it found nothing .. can anyone help
 
You might also like to use find command on the Console (or Terminal.App). Type

sudo find / -ctime -1 -size +1M
Click to expand...

and you'll see files

- starting from the root (/), i.e. all files
- newer than 24 hours (-ctime -1)
- bigger than 1 Mb (-size +1M)
 
on my desk top icon for my hard drive its like some numbers are missing
Example it will say
249.72 gb ...34 GB Free
but if i click on Quick look , it will say
249.72 gb 108.07
. at all times both will show two totally different readings
as now one says 34 free while the other says 108 free
 
swiftysoitiz said:
some numbers are missing
Example it will say
249.72 gb ...34 GB Free
Click to expand...

This doesn't mean that there is 34GB free -- this means that the string of text is too long to display all information, hence the ellipsis (...) in the middle.

You're seeing a truncated text string. It does not indicate that only 34GB are free. More than likely, there is 134GB free, and the "1" is being truncated due to the text string length.
 
Or better yet, use "df -H" ('H' as human readable). It prints disk size and free space in gigabytes (or megabytes or terabytes, depending on the size).
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
This doesn't mean that there is 34GB free -- this means that the string of text is too long to display all information, hence the ellipsis (...) in the middle.

You're seeing a truncated text string. It does not indicate that only 34GB are free. More than likely, there is 134GB free, and the "1" is being truncated due to the text string length.
Click to expand...

yeah i know what yr saying. but why is it changing all the time . i am not d/l or up loading anything , i uploaded a cd of 7 tracks and it used 3 gig to do so . each time i do stuff on the comp it seems to be using gig
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
This doesn't mean that there is 34GB free -- this means that the string of text is too long to display all information, hence the ellipsis (...) in the middle.

You're seeing a truncated text string. It does not indicate that only 34GB are free. More than likely, there is 134GB free, and the "1" is being truncated due to the text string length.
Click to expand...

i understand what yr saying , but why is it changing all the time . like im loosing almost 80 gig sometimes , each time i reboot its different , while im logged on , it goes up n down all the time , as said i have only d/l two mac virus checks , each one taking at least 3 gig of space , and rather than clearing space , they removed gigs
 
If you add files or apps, those will take up space - in effect, 'removing gigs'

Try the terminal command as listed above.
Your terminal is in your Applications/Utilities folder.
Open Terminal, then type in the command. If you don't know how to interpret what you see, come back here with the results.

Why would you be using two different antivirus apps? Even one is one too many... :D
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
This doesn't mean that there is 34GB free -- this means that the string of text is too long to display all information, hence the ellipsis (...) in the middle.

You're seeing a truncated text string. It does not indicate that only 34GB are free. More than likely, there is 134GB free, and the "1" is being truncated due to the text string length.
Click to expand...

DeltaMac said:
If you add files or apps, those will take up space - in effect, 'removing gigs'

Try the terminal command as listed above.
Your terminal is in your Applications/Utilities folder.
Open Terminal, then type in the command. If you don't know how to interpret what you see, come back here with the results.

Why would you be using two different antivirus apps? Even one is one too many... :D
Click to expand...

i have had my mac since 2008 not one problem till this , a few folk suggested these mac anti virus systems . seeing me gigs go up n down every few minutes has me very worried , i tried both as i want to find out what the issue is
 
not a virus

You should discover more about where your space is going.
The terminal commands can give you some information about that, and you can post that information here so others can help you decide if you have a problem - or normal system operation...
 
I'm guessing that you meant ClamXav.
Maccleanse is one of many system maintenance utilities. Some others are free, such as OnyX. - and not an antivirus - which isn't your problem.
You would need to look at your various logs, using the Console app. You may find that some logs are adding error messages continually, and that's where your drive space is going, and not to a nonexistent virus. Maccleanse should help you with that. Read the help that should be included with Maccleanse.
 
Are you shutting down your computer every night? If so, the nightly, weekly and monthly maintenance jobs that clear out the system logs are not being done. These files can grow and take up hard drive space.
 
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