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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

Reply
122 replies

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

lion eating my hard drive space

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