lion eating my hard drive space

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Level 1

14 points

lion eating my hard drive space

Installed Lion on my MacBook Pro and iMac and the same thing is happening on both. If I Get Info on the hard drive I can literally watch the "used" bytes rise. My hard drive space is disappearing right before my eyes.

Brought MacBook into Apple Store and they told me to reinstall Lion - did that and it didn't fix.

Is anyone else seeing this?

Apple store says it's related to the Autosave stuff but I assume my two machines aren't the only ones this is happening to.

Need some help!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Jul 23, 2011 5:50 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 23, 2011 5:54 PM in response to rsjm

No having the issue,is like you downloading something really quick,does it stop?

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Answer 2

Jul 23, 2011 5:54 PM in response to rsjm

Could you give us some idea of the rate of consumption of space?

Like, how much has disappeared over how long?

Could it be that Spotlight is still indexing the drives and expanding the index? Or is it something much bigger that is happening?

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Answer 3

rsjm Author

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14 points

Jul 23, 2011 6:05 PM in response to John Kitchen

As I watch it loses chunks of 80,000 to 120,000 every 20 seconds. I installed it on my iMac a few days ago and have gone from 120 Gig free space to 88 Gig.

I can't keep up with the MacBook. I'll clear 3 Gig of space and before I know it have to clear more as I don't have any more hard drive space left.

Ridiculous.

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Answer 4

Jul 23, 2011 6:27 PM in response to rsjm

Wow! This sounds serious. I wish I could help, but I am out of ideas.

I'd recommend you call Apple Support, not the store.

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Answer 5

zair

Level 1

0 points

Jul 23, 2011 7:00 PM in response to rsjm

You could install a disk usage utility. You may be able to see which directory is using all of the disk space.

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Answer 6

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 23, 2011 8:17 PM in response to rsjm

See
Where did my Disk Space go?

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Answer 7

rsjm Author

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14 points

Jul 23, 2011 9:17 PM in response to Pondini

Yeah just made another trip to apple store and they have no idea what to do except go back to snow leopard. Awesome.

Checked "where did my disk space go"... already - thanks though. It's not any of that stuff - seems to be the autosave feature in Lion that you can't turn off.

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Answer 8

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 23, 2011 9:28 PM in response to rsjm

It shouldn't be autosave; that should take very little additional space, since only the changed "chunks" of things you're actively working on are saved, not whole extra copies.

If it were only your laptop, I'd suspect Local Backups, but since it's your iMac, too, it must be something else.

I'd be inclined to screen-print the first page from WhatSize or other such tool; then compare it with another later on and see if you can find big differences.

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Answer 9

rsjm Author

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14 points

Jul 23, 2011 9:38 PM in response to Pondini

Right it definitely shouldn't be autosave but it's looking like it is. We went through What Size with a Genius and there is nothing outstanding there - in fact, he couldn't even find where it does the backups.

I don't know - pretty frustrated right now.

Maybe it's not autosave but it's not log files or the usual suspects either...

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Answer 10

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 23, 2011 9:44 PM in response to rsjm

rsjm wrote:

Right it definitely shouldn't be autosave but it's looking like it is. We went through What Size with a Genius and there is nothing outstanding there - in fact, he couldn't even find where it does the backups.

There's a hidden folder at the top level of your OSX volume (and any others that you use apps with Autosave and Versions on): /.DocumentRevisions-V101

Local snapshots are in /.MobileBackups (but don't make extra copies of things in DocumentRevisions).

The Finder does not show accurate sizes for MobileBackups, and probably not for DocumentRevisions, either.

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Answer 11

rsjm Author

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Jul 23, 2011 10:35 PM in response to Pondini

Hey Pondini, sorry but how do I see those files? I can't find them anywhere including DiskDaisy?

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Answer 12

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 24, 2011 7:47 AM in response to rsjm

Those are hidden folders (the dot in front of the name).

Download the free TinkerTool app, from http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

On the Finder tab, check the very first box, then the Relaunch Finder button. Reverse this when done.

Those (and other) things are hidden for a reason; be very careful not to move, change, or delete anything.

Also be careful with any other options in the TinkerTool app.

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Answer 13

Jul 24, 2011 7:58 AM in response to rsjm

Could it be that your Time Machine drive is offline, and TM is making local "backups" which will be transferred to the TM disk next time it is online again?

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Answer 14

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 24, 2011 8:46 AM in response to John Kitchen

John Kitchen wrote:

Could it be that your Time Machine drive is offline, and TM is making local "backups" which will be transferred to the TM disk next time it is online again?

If TM makes Local snapshots, it makes them whether the TM drive is available or not, and they're no longer transferred to the TM drive under any circumstances (that was dropped in an early beta version).

See #30 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

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Answer 15

Jul 24, 2011 10:12 AM in response to Pondini

@Pondini. Thanks for the correction!

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