Mac issue (HDD space)

[koontz946]

Trying to fix an issue with a computer that seems to be missing HDD space.

In Terminal I ran "sudo du -hd1 /" and found 80G in Users, and upon further investigation I found that in Users/*username* there was 21G being taken up, and in Users/.*username* there was 59G.

Filevault or whatever it's called IS enabled, and there don't seem to be any phantom volumes from the external HDD connected to the system. (ran "sudo du -hd1 -x", maybe with a command after, not sure... and it didn't show the external drive again.)

It's a ~74G drive, with ~30G accounted for, and only 1.5G showing as free.

Parallels is installed on the system, but I was unable to see how much space it is allocated in the time I was working on it.

Virtual Memory according to the Activity Monitor accounted for maybe another 2G, but that was just what was being used, not what was allocated.

About 22G worth of music was moved off the internal HDD (as far as I could tell, was unable to find a directory with near that much usage), and the available space is still very low.

The trash is empty, and I am awaiting the boot CD to try a repair, as I've read that can gain significant HD space back.

Any suggestions?

[dropadrop]

Firstly depending on the version of OSX it will not free up the space gained by deleting files until you reboot (due to filevault). The .*username* file you see is an encrypted image which is mounted to *username* so you can access it (when logging in).

I think you are on the right track, personally I'd do something like this to find out where the stuff is:

cd /
sudo du -h -d 3 |grep [0-9]G

This will only show the lines where you have over 1GB of stuff, but will go further in your filestructure (-d 3) then your example.

Here is an example of how it looks for me:


5.5G ./Applications
1.5G ./Developer/Documentation/DocSets
1.5G ./Developer/Documentation
2.6G ./Developer
5.1G ./fusion/backtrack4/Other Linux 2.6.x kernel.vmwarevm
5.1G ./fusion/backtrack4
1.6G ./fusion/HowNetWorks/image
1.7G ./fusion/HowNetWorks
1.2G ./fusion/NetappSimulator
21G ./fusion/WindowsXP/Windows XP.vmwarevm
21G ./fusion/WindowsXP
29G ./fusion
1.9G ./Library/Application Support/GarageBand
4.1G ./Library/Application Support


I have 5.5GB in /Applications, but no single application is larger then 1GB.
I have 2.6GB under /Developer, the only large folder being /Developer/Documentation/DocSets
I have 29GB under /fusion divided into a few virtual machines

And so on...

[koontz946]

Thanks, I'll post what I get when I get back to that machine.

Once I find out where all the space is being taken up, what steps are there to free it up? Or would you need the printout to tell?

[FudgeNuggets]

It's most likely old user files from a previous install. Once you find them then you can delete them.

Also look for Parallels files and time machine files which can be found in the documents folder

[koontz946]

I doubt it's a previous install issue since I would have most likely done that and this is (I believe) the only OS install (aside from Parallels).

As far as Parallels files in the documents folder, do you mean the documents folder viewable on the mac OS? Because that folder had maybe 1.2G worth of stuff in it.

[FudgeNuggets]

I doubt it's a previous install issue since I would have most likely done that and this is (I believe) the only OS install (aside from Parallels).

As far as Parallels files in the documents folder, do you mean the documents folder viewable on the mac OS? Because that folder had maybe 1.2G worth of stuff in it.

It's the viewable folder. Maybe it's just not partitioned correctly. Have you checked the partitions in Disk Manager?

[dropadrop]

Thanks, I'll post what I get when I get back to that machine.

Once I find out where all the space is being taken up, what steps are there to free it up? Or would you need the printout to tell?

That would depend where the space is taken up... If you delete a file, empty the trash and reboot the machine (remember filevault does not free the space before you log the user out) the space should be free.

I understood your problem was actually figuring out what is using up the space, not deciding how to free it up. :)

So if you post the listing, sure I can help, but I would not be surprised if you figure it out your self too. Good luck!