Your startup disk is almost full...

S

Snowfall

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I have an iBook G4 running OS 10.3.9.
For the past few days, this message: "Your startup disk is almost full" has been popping up. I've burned some CDs of photos, deleted unwanted files, music, etc. After deleting these things and emptying the trash, it told me I had just over 2GB of free space. However, this free space is getting smaller and smaller (even when I didn't have any applications open..). It seems to be just disappearing. In the space of about 12 hours (most of which I spent sleeping with the laptop turned off..), I seem to have gone down to 1.18GB. When I restart the computer, it sometimes tells me that I have what seems to be a random small number of MB or GB, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller than what it originally told me, or even 0 when I restart, even though I haven't actually made any new files or downloaded anything!

I hope this make sense!! Any help would be much appreciated.
 
OS X will use hard drive space for virtual RAM, which can take up a large amount of free space. This, however, should clear on a reboot. It's also possible that it's some log files going out of control, try running a maintenance/cleaning program such as Onyx. Filevault can also cause low-space problems. 2 GB isn't nearly enough free space for comfortable operation, you should really have 10 GB free for virtual RAM etc. Here's some tips on freeing up space:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
 
Thank you for your help! I found something in my Home folder called 'nohup.out', which I deleted, providing me with more than 23GB of free space. I downloaded Onyx and did the 'Automation', and restarted. I'm not sure what Filevault is. I did a search for it, but I don't have anything called Filevault.

The problem isn't free space, but that the free space is mysteriously disappearing into thin air. Any idea what could be causing this?? The Automation on Onyx hasn't seemed to change that...
 
Same question. Just started happening to me (Mini, 10.4.11).

I had about 12mb free on a 112mb drive (a bit tight)
Freed it up to 20+mb free. Got the "startup disk almost full" warning again)
Freed it up to 43+mb free. Got the "startup disk almost full" warning again)

I see lots of threads quoting this error message, various places, mostly recently.
Anyone have a pointer to any one place where this is best asked about?
 
I have an extreme case: my startup disk is 116 gb; until a few days ago (last time I checked) the filled amount was only 23 gb. Today I got the warning "startup disk almost full" and the 'get info' claims 115.98 of 16.31 is occupied -- there's no way I've suddenly acquired an additional 93 gb in the past few days by surfing the web (no new programs installed). The 'view by size' feature in OS X (mine is tiger 10.4.11 with latest security update) is worthless. If there is a log or temp file doing this, I can't find it. Is there a way to poll the entire startup disk for the largest single file? I've been having issues with my preferred browser, Firefox 3.x around memory leaks, but I can't find a log file to delete that may be causing the problem, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446153. It would be a horror show for me to revert to the less capable Safari browser, so if the memory leaks in Firefox are creating a humongous log file somewhere, I'd rather just delete it if I could find it. Any suggestions? Individual replies invited at vicjoe [at] shaw [dot] ca. Thanks.
 
The above should read instead of "'get info' claims 115.98 of 16.31" "'get info' claims 115.98 of 116.31" gigs.
 
Back in the NeXT days we had an app called DarkForest for dealing with this type of stuff... today there are two apps that provide similar functionality, OmniDiskSweeper and WhatSize. Sadly WhatSize is no longer a free application.
 
RacerX said:
Back in the NeXT days we had an app called DarkForest for dealing with this type of stuff... today there are two apps that provide similar functionality, OmniDiskSweeper and WhatSize. Sadly WhatSize is no longer a free application.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for that. I did obtain OmniDiskSweeper, and it duly reported my startup disk to have a total of 21.1 gigs. The finder's "get info" still says I've used 115.94 or 116.31 gb disk space! Running Disk Utility (live verify) says the boot volume passed, something like "appears to be okay". Nevertheless I will try booting from Tiger install disc and running Disk Utility from there.

Okay, I have now booted from the install disc and Disk Utility says 'no repairs necessary'. What is my next step? DiskWarrior?
 
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