why is my hard disk so full?

Delete the Previous Systems folder. There is nothing there that you need and it could free up GBs of space depending how many are in there.

How much data do you have? Music, videos, etc?

I am putting out an SOS for amigos who are HDD specialists to come here and help you solve this issue.

Have him download and run eitherWhatSize or Omni DiskSweeper to see what's hogging his space.

The system can generate a number of cache files that can get out of hand if no maintenance is being performed, as can some printer software. Sometimes manually running the automatic maintenance scripts can eliminate the OSX contributions. The tools Macjack recommended can find hidden print files.

Info on manully running the scripts can be found here:

Running the Mac OS X maintenance scripts

Although the scripts are better handled in later versions of OSX that older ones, running them may gain you some space in 10.4.

The article WhereDid My Disk Space Go? (http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243) suggests different scenarios for disappearing disk space. Read it over to see if any of it applies in your situation.

You said that you have deleted as much as you can. Dr. Smoke's FAQ Freeing up Space on your Startup Drive (http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html) lists items you can safely delete from your volume without affecting its functioning.

If after deleting items you find the space filling up you may have some process that is dumping entries in your Console log and filling up your space. As already suggested run a utility like WhatSize (http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php) or Disk Inventory (http://www.derlien.com/). Either one will scan your drive and list the contents by size. Examine extremely large files that seem suspicious and report back.

😉 cornelius

Hi, plenty of great help here, but

At this point I think you should get Applejack...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15667/applejack

After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...

applejack AUTO

Then let it do all 6 of it's things.

At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.

The 6 things it does are...

Correct any Disk problems.

Repair Permissions.

Clear out Cache Files.

Repair/check several plist files.

Dump the VM files for a fresh start.

Trash old Log files.

First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files! :-)

Disconnect the USB cable from any Uninterruptible Power Supply so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.

You might also open Console in Applications>Utilities & see if you are getting frequent errors logging continually.

This will not take much time so you can give a quick try. Go to Applications > Utilities > Console. View the Console log and see if there are repeating entries. There would be quite a few identical entries, so it should be easy to spot them. Copy ten or twelve lines and post them in your response.

😉 cornelius

I think you may have some files the are getting onto the hard drive that you can't see. It happened to me when I was doing a back-up and the computer not only backed up to an external drive, but then copied the entire external drive's contents back onto my hard drive. I took the computer to the Apple Store, and the technician finally found that was what happened. He used a program called Daisy Disk (/www.daisydiskapp.com/) and the duplicate drive contents showed up there. When deleted, I retrieved all the space that had disappeared.

Try Grand Perspective:

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

It will give you a visual indication of the folder/file sizes on your drive (point it at the root of your boot drive and let it scan.)

Pretty results too, like this:

The Omni Disk Sweeper helped me figure out what was the things I didn't need