OS X Memory Problem

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b1hgaa88

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I keep getting a "Disk full" message which prevents me from saving anything in any of my apps in Mac OS 10.2.6. My HD is pretty full but I have a few hundred megs free on my partitions so this is total nonsense.

When I reboot the system reverts to default — i.e. I lose all finder and application prefs and I lose all that I had in the Dock other than the default stuff. fsck -y always tells me that the system appears O.K.

When I then rebuild my prefs things work O.K. for a while but then the problem recurs, apparently in a random sort of way (i.e. I cannot pin point any particular app that might be the cause of the problem).

I have run DiskWarrior 3 on all my five partitions (including the System partition) and have repaired the permissions with Disk Utility.

I tried Norton Disk First Aid but that chokes on me at a certain point (says it cannot continue for some reason). Same with Disk 10 — simply freezes after performing a few hundred thousand tests. DiskWarrior is the only one that finishes the job.

Any suggestions as to what the problem could be, and how to fix? Has anyone else had this problem? VERY frustrating and time consuming.

Thanks
 
How big are your partitions? In particular, how big is your System (boot) partition and how much free space is there on that one?

In my view (and I know some will disagree with this), you are actually helping to cause the problem you're seeing by partitioning. With OSX, it is much better to let the OS manage the file system. By partitioning, you are taking away some of the flexibility that OSX has in the way it manages space.

Apart from that, even if you do partition your hard drive, then the partition from which you boot your system should have about 25% free space (as a percentage of the partition size) in order for OSX to work "normally".

Hope this helps.
 
yea, you're out of space. And when Norton chokes like that, it's from the number of files. I normally open fast find or another norton app, then go back to the Norton Repair and ren run, if that doesn't work. Check the Check for defective media, that will cause it to run slower, but if the disk is full it will take the same time anyway. But your disk is full. A partitioned system always works better.
 
Remember, OS X creates swapfiles that can get rather large if you run with a RAM deficiency at any point. A few hundred meg could easily be consumed by a couple of swapfiles.

If you have any utilities that show invisible files, run them, and see how big the swapfiles are. You can also do this in the terminal too, of course.
 
If you're going to use a partition setup, and your system partition only has 'a few hundred megs free' time for a larger partition for your system. As others have said here, the swap file can eat up a lot of space. I've always used a general rule of thumb of '<10% space free, time to clear out the drive', release some of that space, or transfer to larger partition. :)
 
Thanks all. Yes, I think my problem is lack of drive space, though nothing to do with swap files since i do the swaps on a separate partition and that does have sufficient space available.

I have now taken around 400 MG of "stuff" off the partition where I keep my system and I already note that things are a lot more "peppy". The system now has around 6% free space to play with—probably not sufficient for fail safe activity by I've had no memory problems yet (keeping my fingers crossed).
 
Here's how I figure free space left for OSX. Total system files (System folder + Library folder) For me this is 680 MB, + Total ram installed (768MB), adds up to 1.4 GB free space - - a good amount to keep free on the bootup partition - - (Please, this is not a technical treatise here (I don't account for all the hidden unix stuff), it's just something that seems to work for me). Watch your swap file partition that has 'adequate' space, what does the swap file use, 64MB chunks?
 
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