Kernel Event VQ_LOWDISK VQ_VERYLOWDISK on new iMac

Thanks for the followup. I'm not sure whether there was any connection between the log messages and the hardware fault.

I too am finding this same error on one of our iMacs.

We have 80+ iMacs that are all setup identically, so we were pretty quickly able to eliminate software as a problem.

The problem reared it's head when this particlar machine would not accept a remote, automatic install of Adobe CS5.5 like all the other 80 machines did.

No CS5.5 apps would install. We tried installing manually using CS5.5 .dmg and .iso media. We also tried using physical media. It would randomly install some CS5.5 dot products and not others. Very little information about the failures were in the logs, but consistently the following error was seen.

I am leaning towards a RAM issue, but it could be a drive or logic board issue. This issue is a real rare one it seems.

I have checked the drive with Smart Utility and Smart Reporter, with no errors. I have completely erased and reparitioned the drive too. On a fresh install it will still fail to install CS5.5 without issue.

I have booked in to see the friendly Apple Genius Bar to see what they'll say.

This is an educational iMac and strictly speaking is out of the 12months voluntary Apple Warranty period.

Being located in Australia, and this machine being from the very end of 2010, I am hoping not to have too much friction with the Apple guys and hope they just repair it (it is just over 14months old!).

If there is any problems, I'll just have to invoke my rights under Australian Consumer law that the machine be repaired under Statutory Warranty, that states any product sold should be of merchantable quality for its useful life (I'd expect 3 years out of it, at least)

Hi Linc & Sheila,

I have also been having the Low Disk Warning problem for a couple of months now on my Macbook Pro running 10.7.4

The HFS: Very Low Disk appears typically when the computer is woken up from sleep. I did Disk Repairs but that has changed nothing.

Interestingly, I noticed that when I plug in my USB disk I get a similar error; here are some lines from kernel.log

Aug 1 10:04:23 MacRegisII kernel[0]: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 575841314135304E39343835 0x1058 0x70a 0x2003

Aug 1 10:04:25 MacRegisII kernel[0]: SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x05, ASC = 0x24, ASCQ = 0x00

Aug 1 10:04:25: --- last message repeated 4 times ---

Aug 1 10:04:25 MacRegisII kernel[0]: HFS: Very Low Disk: freeblks: 0, dangerlimit: 1159

There is no reason for these errors on my main drive (size: 500G; free ~170G) and USB drive (size: 500G; free ~200G).

So this consistently wrong accounting for the disk space seems to be a s/w or OS problem rather than a problem with the actual drives. So I don't think running repairs or reformating the drives is going to solve the problem, and it hasn't so far for me.

Do you have any other suggestions for remedying this very annoying problem?

Thanks for your time.

Peter

The error is a 'red herring'. Whilst is reports Very Low Disk, it is usually not because you dont' have enough free space.

The error comes about when the drive itself is not responding to requests from the system to be able to write something. The system assumes this is becuase there is insufficient disk space, but it is wrong.

The errors also get logged when mounting other disks, because the system still needs to write data to the main drive when it mounts a new disk.

This is usually because the disk is faulty. Physically faulty. ie no software will be able to fix the issue.

I recently had an iMac that had these symptoms, and despite all the usual software reporting that the harddrive was ok, and it having sufficient disk space, the ultimte fix was a replacement hard drive.