Disk Full Alert! message

You get that message when your hard drive is close to being full. You want to keep 10% or more free for systems usage. When you have less than that, the system can run much slower, and if it runs out of space to work, you get the message you're seeing.

First thing to do is some disk maintenance to clean things up. I use OnyX, available at http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html . Do the tasks in the cleaning and maintenance tabs. That should free up some space, however, you'll probably still need to delete some files or programs. If you have an external hard drive, you can offload some files to it for offline storage. The program WhatSize is useful to see what files are taking up space, and is available from http://whatsize.en.softonic.com/mac

It sounds like your hard drive is too full, and it is imperative that you free up some space or risk a crash and losing everything.

As soon as you can, get a large external fire wire drive and move what you can onto it. Good candidates would be large video files, large music files, maybe iPhoto if you have a lot of photos. There could even be some rogue file which is taking up lots of space. Once something has been moved onto the external drive, delete it from your internal drive and empty the trash. You won't recover the space until you empty the trash.

A good way to see what is taking up space would be to download one of the following:

WhatSize:

http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/

Disk Inventory X

http://www.derlien.com

Both used to be free, but I've heard there is a small charge for WhatSize now.

It's good practice to keep 15%-20% of your hard drive free if you can.

To check, open Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder) and click on "Macintosh HD". Then look down at the bottom right bold faced table and see what it says about "Capacity", "Available", and "Used".

While in Disk Utility, click on you hard drive by brand name and check to see that the S.M.A.R.T. status is verified. If it is not and there is a message in red letters, please report back with the message.

But put a priority on getting everything important backed up to an external drive.

Good luck.

Don't know--but there is obviously something strange going on. Did you run either WhatSize or Disk Inventory X? If you do, look for anything that shouldn't be there or looks strange to you and post back.

Don't know if this would be relevant or not, but you might go to "About this Mac">More Info>Memory and be sure all your RAM is present and recognized.

But I am very puzzled by your getting this message with 30% of your hard drive free.

Good luck!

If you use WhatSize, what does it report for capacity vs used?