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How do I regain free space? I ran disk utility erase free space and lost over 150GB of unused space (go figure I guess it works!). My problem is now my Imac HD says that it only has 134 MB available (out of 232 GB originally). To boot, this is an 08 Imac, I have moved several times since purchasing it and cannot find the original OS X disks
Thanks in Advance
iMac
You can call Apple support, and if they are still available, they can sell you a set of replacement OS X DVD's, which include the Apple hardware test, as well as the ability to boot to DVD in order to run the Disk Utility repair disk option. Or you could buy TechTool Pro, which can do similar hardware testing and disk repair too.
On your space, you might go into console and look at your console log to see if something is filling up log files. Or use one of the disk inventory programs to see what is actually taking up space. Is it possible that you started a backup and interrupted it? Some backup programs can leave a hidden file on the hard drive if the process is interrupted.
Try just restarting. If that doesn't help, you need to look for a very large temporary file of that size, which can be deleted. You may be able to do this using OmniDisk Sweeper to scan the drive. When you do the Erase Free Space, all the free space is overwritten by a temporary sparse image file, which should be removed when finished. For some reason it hasn't been.
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/
There's an article you should have a look at, but I can't get to it right now.
http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/quickie/recovering_from_a_failed_secure_erase_fre e_space
Here's a quote from that article.
Sometimes, when using the erase free space function of Disk Utility, the process will be interrupted by a crash, hang, power outage, or small mammal urinating on the power supply. Should this happen, you’ll find that your disk has suddenly lost the majority of its free space and nothing you do in the GUI will show you where it is. No amount of checking the disk will bring it back, because it’s not a catalog problem.
Disk Utility accomplishes the erase feature by creating large sparse image files in a preset directory. It then deletes them with the srm tool (secure remove) and an overwrite pattern of your choice. If Disk Utility is interrupted, this sparse image is left on the disk just taking up space. Starting another free space erase session makes another file, instead of cleaning up the previous one. So, as there are no checks in Disk Utility for cleaning up this failed process, so you have to hunt it down manually.
There are a variety of ways of doing this, but I’ll cut to the chase and give you the answer. The files are created in /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems and are sequential variations of the name EFTFile1.sparseimage. Simply remove these files (as root) to reclaim your free space and then start the process again to finish the task.
sudo rm -f /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/*
Copy/Paste the command, as above, into Terminal in Applications>Utilities. Do NOT try to type it in. A typo can have disastrous results.
When entered, hit return. You will be given a warning about using the sudo command. Continue and enter your password, which you won't see on the screen as you type it. Then hit enter and wait for the $ sign prompt to reappear, which will indicate the command has finished and close the window.
EDIT: I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR OS IS. THIS COMMAND WILL WORK FOR 10.5 AND 10.6. IF YOU ARE RUNNING 10.4, IT WON'T WORK. AND I DON'T KNOW ABOUT LION.
Message was edited by: WZZZ
Message was edited by: WZZZ
How do I regain free space?
