Start up disk almost full.
- Thread starter Reality
- Start date
perfessor101
Registered
Since we have no idea what is on your startup drive or how big it is in the first place, this is almost an impossible question to answer. Stripping out unused printer drivers has already been suggested. Add t that, running Monolingual and ditching any unneeded language localization files will yield you a net gain of a few, very few, MegaBytes, but certainly not not GigaBytes.
Run Cocktail or Onyx to clean up the log files, archived logs, and cache files and you will probably gain a whole lot more disk space than deleting unneeded language localization files and print drivers. Just remember this is a temporary gain and you will have to repeat this step periodically to stay ahead of the accumulation.
WhatSize is a handy freeware utility that will scan all your visible and invisible files and folders and rank them by size so you at least know where your disk space is going. Be careful with any utility of this type because it will let you delete almost any file on the system and used injudiciously can quickly render OS X inoperative and unrecoverable.
Among the user's files, music, photo, and video files can eat MegaBytes of disk space in nothing flat. Then your only choice is which are you willing to delete. Just remember you can delete a song in iTunes and unless you specify that you also want the file deleted it is still taking up the same amount of disk space.
Warning: any time the free space on your hard drive falls below 15% there is a greatly increased risk of irreparable damage to your file system occurring, so you probably need to clean out a lot more disk space than you think you do to get below the 15% free space level. It may be time for you to consider:
Good Luck!
Run Cocktail or Onyx to clean up the log files, archived logs, and cache files and you will probably gain a whole lot more disk space than deleting unneeded language localization files and print drivers. Just remember this is a temporary gain and you will have to repeat this step periodically to stay ahead of the accumulation.
WhatSize is a handy freeware utility that will scan all your visible and invisible files and folders and rank them by size so you at least know where your disk space is going. Be careful with any utility of this type because it will let you delete almost any file on the system and used injudiciously can quickly render OS X inoperative and unrecoverable.
Among the user's files, music, photo, and video files can eat MegaBytes of disk space in nothing flat. Then your only choice is which are you willing to delete. Just remember you can delete a song in iTunes and unless you specify that you also want the file deleted it is still taking up the same amount of disk space.
Warning: any time the free space on your hard drive falls below 15% there is a greatly increased risk of irreparable damage to your file system occurring, so you probably need to clean out a lot more disk space than you think you do to get below the 15% free space level. It may be time for you to consider:
- Replacing your hard drive with a substantially larger one
- Adding a second internal hard drive to your system if possible
- Adding an external firewire hard drive to your system
- all of the above
Good Luck!
Ah ok I see. Sorry for the lack of info there guys. I'm pretty new to computer tech and such but heh, I'm learning. Ok just to give some extra info, in case any other suggestions can be made.
The HardDrive is only 80GB (Not very large at all) and I do have lots of movies and digital pictures so I got some blank CDs today and I'll go through them all and burn what I want to keep and trash the rest.
After I'm finished with that I'll do a Disk Utility scan (haven't done it yet this week.) I'll also look into those apps you listed Perfessor. I never cleaned out any type of logs or cache files before so I'd imagine I have a whole lot on here. Thanks guys for your help.
PS. I think I'll look on ebay for some external Hard Drives. Can anybody recommend a good brand?
The HardDrive is only 80GB (Not very large at all) and I do have lots of movies and digital pictures so I got some blank CDs today and I'll go through them all and burn what I want to keep and trash the rest.
After I'm finished with that I'll do a Disk Utility scan (haven't done it yet this week.) I'll also look into those apps you listed Perfessor. I never cleaned out any type of logs or cache files before so I'd imagine I have a whole lot on here. Thanks guys for your help.
PS. I think I'll look on ebay for some external Hard Drives. Can anybody recommend a good brand?
perfessor101
Registered
Movies! Bet money that is where most of your disk space has gone. The files for a one hour iDVD project can easily eat up 30 GB (I have a couple that will prove that.) Hope you have a SuperDrive and some blank DVD-Rs, you are going to need the storage space.Reality said:
The system automatically rotates and archives the log files every night around 3:00 to 5:00 A.M. if your computer is on and if the system is not asleep! The cache files are also supposed to be self limiting, but sometimes they do seem to accumulate.
I would be leery of firewire drives purchased on eBay. You may be buying another user's problem without knowing it. Among the brands with a good reputation for supporting Macs are LaCie, Granite Digital, Other World Computing, and Maxtor. There are obviously other brands on the market but there have been compatibility issues with OS X from time to time and these four brands have been quick to fix any compatibility problems that have arisen. Some PC centric brands basically said, "So what?" A good place to check compatibility issues is the user reports database at XLR8YourMac.
Remember this when looking for an external hard drive.
- Firewire drives are bootable with OS X
- USB drives are not bootable with OS X.
- You want a bootable external drive.
- Firewire 800 devices will work on a Firewire 400 bus with a nine pin to six pin connector cable but only at the slower speed.
- Always buy more capacity than you think you will ever need. Later on you will wonder why you didn't buy more
- When you buy a Firewire drive, the unique elements are the case, power supply, and firewire bridge chip. It is the firewire bridge chip and its firmware that dictates OS X compatibility. All the manufacturers use the same actual drive mechanisms from Hitachi/IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, or Western Digital.
Arden
Where mah "any" keys at?
Another part of it is how long your computer has been on consecutively. If your uptime gets to be very long, and especially if you open and close lots of programs, you will build massive amounts of swap files. I've looked at my swap files and found them up to 2 GB... and my internal drive is 12.7 GB, much bigger than yours. 
Restarting (or at least logging out) should cure this.
Restarting (or at least logging out) should cure this.
Randman
HA! HA! HA!
Running cron jobs via something like Cocktail should help with that Arden. And it shouldn't be as much of a problem either, if ram is sufficient.
For video, I'd recommend an external HD, especially as prices are dropping every day.
I prefer Delocalizer over Monolingual.
If you don't need Classic, you could delete that, or move it to the external. iDVD and Garageband are other space hogs. Loops and themes can be moved over to an external or burnt to a DVD to help save some space as well.
For video, I'd recommend an external HD, especially as prices are dropping every day.
I prefer Delocalizer over Monolingual.
If you don't need Classic, you could delete that, or move it to the external. iDVD and Garageband are other space hogs. Loops and themes can be moved over to an external or burnt to a DVD to help save some space as well.
perfessor101
Registered
Two GB of swapfiles is an indication of the applications you are using, the files you are working on, and lack of RAM - not uptime. My computer has been up for over a month and I have two 64 MB swapfiles.Arden said:Another part of it is how long your computer has been on consecutively. If your uptime gets to be very long, and especially if you open and close lots of programs, you will build massive amounts of swap files. I've looked at my swap files and found them up to 2 GB... and my internal drive is 12.7 GB, much bigger than yours.
Restarting (or at least logging out) should cure this.
Logging out has no effect on swapfiles either. Virtual memory is a basic system level function unrelated to which user is logged on. Shutting down will delete the existing swapfiles. Onyx or Cocktail will delete the swapfiles too. But, it is advisable to restart after they have been deleted. If there was application data in the swapfile when you deleted it, you just trashed the data and that could conceivably result in file corruption.
Darkshadow
wandering shadow
Hmm, Arden does some software development, which can create some extra swapfiles. I was doing some tests myself the other day and managed to fill my swap space. I have my swap files on a 2 GB partition of its own, which is usually more than sufficient, but I had a rather big memory bug that bit me.
quiksan
awesomer...
check out JDiskReport .
Awesome java app available (free) for OS X. Scans your system, tells you the size of each directory (in simple to read pie chart layout) and then even tells you the % of each file type and how much space it's taking up.
great for weeding out the stuff you forgot about, or no longer want - or at least where to look (at a quick glance) for the big storage hoggers.
good luck
Awesome java app available (free) for OS X. Scans your system, tells you the size of each directory (in simple to read pie chart layout) and then even tells you the % of each file type and how much space it's taking up.
great for weeding out the stuff you forgot about, or no longer want - or at least where to look (at a quick glance) for the big storage hoggers.
good luck
CaptainQuark
93 93/93
Do I need to get on my 'backing up' hobby horse again? All of the advice given above (with the possible exception of Arden's gibberings ) is sound. Follow it and you won't go wrong. Get the movies files burned to CD/DVD and clear the space. If you can afford an external drive, then keep your data files there rather than on your startup disk. Apart from the obvious issue of space, you will also find that your Mac will run faster when the startup disk can concentrate on reading and writing system stuff.
And back your data up regularly! Sure, it's a pain in the fundamentwhen then hard disk dies (note when, not if!). But at least you can re-install your system and software from the source disks. But all your data files... ?
All of the advice given above (with the possible exception of Arden's gibberings ) is sound. Follow it and you won't go wrong. Get the movies files burned to CD/DVD and clear the space. If you can afford an external drive, then keep your data files there rather than on your startup disk. Apart from the obvious issue of space, you will also find that your Mac will run faster when the startup disk can concentrate on reading and writing system stuff.And back your data up regularly! Sure, it's a pain in the fundamentwhen then hard disk dies (note when, not if!). But at least you can re-install your system and software from the source disks. But all your data files... ?
And: Keep 5 GB or more free on your startup drive. Always. As a rule. Please?
And then: OmniDiskSweeper is also a utility that shows what's taking up how much space. And I like this one the most, compared to the others mentioned in this thread. In the freeware version, you can't hit its powerful delete button, but you can do the trashing in the Finder, of course. Or buy a license, which is worth it.
I would suggest to get a big external harddrive, though. You might want to _keep_ some of the movie files, so they'll always take up some space.
And then: OmniDiskSweeper is also a utility that shows what's taking up how much space. And I like this one the most, compared to the others mentioned in this thread. In the freeware version, you can't hit its powerful delete button, but you can do the trashing in the Finder, of course. Or buy a license, which is worth it.
I would suggest to get a big external harddrive, though. You might want to _keep_ some of the movie files, so they'll always take up some space.
ginopiazza49
Registered
Randman said:
Can you explain what "cron jobs" are? I have Cocktail, however, I do not see any explanation of cron jobs. Also, how does one exaimine where and how big their swap files are?
perfessor101
Registered
Unix maintains daily, weekly, and monthly logs of system operation. The cron tasks are routines that normally run somewhere around 3:00 to 5:00 A.M. when theoretically system usage is at its lowest point. The idea is to roll the information up to the next level, iedaily to weekly, weekly to monthly, archive those logs that can be archive and delete the old files. These tasks are triggered by the cron system of Unix, thus the term cron tasks. In order for these tasks to run your Mac must be booted and awake.ginopiazza49 said:
You may see your swapfiles in Finder by Go > Go to Folder and entering "/private/var/vm/" without the quotation marks. Swapfiles are created in a strict sequence of names and size
- Swapfile0 - 64 MB
- Swapfile1 - 64 MB
- Swapfile2 - 128 MB
- Swapfile3 - 256 MB
- Swapfile4 - 512 MB
bobw
The Late: SuperMacMod
Cron Scripts (Apple's)
The daily script runs at 3:15AM, the weekly script runs at 4:30AM on Saturdays and the monthly script runs at 5:30AM on the first day of the month.
None of these scripts will run if the machine is off or asleep.
The daily script cleans up the tmp directory, where many programs and installers store files that aren't permanently required. This script also backs up the Net-Info database, information on users, services and devices.
The daily script also creates a network interface status report and a free-disk space report, and rotates the system log files by creating multiple compressed backup copies.
The weekly script updates the locate and whatis databases, archives older secondary system logs, such as FTP, and archives web server logs. It also restarts the web server.
The monthly script runs a user time-accounting script and rotates installer log files.
The daily script runs at 3:15AM, the weekly script runs at 4:30AM on Saturdays and the monthly script runs at 5:30AM on the first day of the month.
None of these scripts will run if the machine is off or asleep.
The daily script cleans up the tmp directory, where many programs and installers store files that aren't permanently required. This script also backs up the Net-Info database, information on users, services and devices.
The daily script also creates a network interface status report and a free-disk space report, and rotates the system log files by creating multiple compressed backup copies.
The weekly script updates the locate and whatis databases, archives older secondary system logs, such as FTP, and archives web server logs. It also restarts the web server.
The monthly script runs a user time-accounting script and rotates installer log files.
ginopiazza49
Registered
Thank you Perfessor101 and bobw for the clarification. I appreciate it!