Why is iBooks Author using up my scratch disk space?

What 'versions' configuration are you using in Lion? How many versions of each 'book' are being kept?

I'd say tho, that what your're seeing is typical , but without knowing how big your books are (sorry if I missed that), it's difficult to do anything but speculate.

You should be seeing similar resource demands from iMovie and perhaps Pages - do you have any idea how they behave in this context?

I got the same message on my laptop and the program ground to a halt while editing text on slideshows.

It also kept saving frequently and stopping any input while this happened.

My tech savy son advised me to upgrade so I now have 1TB hard drive and 4 Gb of memory.

This has solved the problems so far but it did cost me £212.

Herman.mitt - you are smarter and more experienced than me when it comes to Macs, so take what I say with a grain of salt and a smile. It is my observation that iBooks Author works in the background like iWeb (remember iWeb?) they both create a host of working files as you add and modify your primary file. Both take up more space than you think they would or should. One way I remedy this is to periodically save my work and quit out of the program. Then I reboot my computer. It usually comes back with the waste basket full of files. I empty the trash and reopen my program and the file I am working on. It runs well and seems to occupy less space.

I work with photos every day. I reduce the picture in Photoshop to the minimum necessary to look good on the iPad. This saves me space in the long run.

I hope this in someway helps. Buying extra hardware to support an iBA project seems inappropriate. - Fabe

I had the same problem. I was working on a media-rich IBA file and saw my hard drive space go from 150GB available to 5GB.

It is the versioning that causes it. It is unbelievable to me that you can't turn this off in IBA. It is mandatory, at least that I can tell. So basically, every single time IBA saves a version of your file, it saves the whole **** thing. For me, with a 1GB file that auto-saved two or three times an hour, you can imagine how quickly even 150GB goes.

The only way I have solved the issue is to eliminate old versions. It is slow and frustrating, but at least it works.

Not sure if you know how to get into the IBA version archive. From memory, open the book in question. Run your mouse pointer right next to the file name in the title bar, and a little triangle should appear. Click to bring up the version archive screen. Then, just click on an old version, and from there you can delete either just that version, or if you hold down the option key (I think) while selecting the version, you can delete that version and all those previous to it.

This was the only way I was able to stop IBA from turning into Pac-Man and eating up my hard drive.

MrBlobby1970 wrote:

It is the versioning that causes it.

No doubt 🙂 thanks for confirming.

The best comment I read so far!

My harddisk space gone from 3GB left (yes... it is sad) to 30GB after I reclaim the versioning space for 7 iBooks I worked on!

Hi Herman. Same Problem and thanks KT - it did solve part of the problem. However - if you (like me) have deleted my first book without removing old versions, it is really bad. Because no access to version cache means permanently lost space. I have had to set a new mac just for iAuthor because I am affraid to open any more books. I am down to 25 GB free space after following guides as to remove old versions. However looking at this picture I should have plenty of free space....the rest has been grapped by iAuthor in a hidden versioning cache somewhere.

As you can see a lot of GB are missing. And it happened EXACTLY when I started using iBooks Author. Before I knew what was happening I was down to 2GB. Versioning is the cause of this. I have been working with media since 1991 - and there is no other programs that saves versions like this - for a good reason. When dealing with large files you need to know where they are, which version and how many. This is completely unsuited for automatic versioning.

I really need - like you also implied to get access to emty the versioning cache. This is a standard feature of products like Adobe Premiere etc. Because when the cache gets too big, you can empty it.

I upgraded to ITB of hard disc and 4Gb memory to solve the problem of lack of disc space.

After working recently with the new version (and the new app) for about an hour it crashed and I lost my work - it reverted to a previous save.

I am now very worried about the stability of the new iBooks author as this never happened before.

My program is 1.1 Gb and I have lots of content to add. I notice in another thread that a 1Gb iBook was recommended.

Are crashes and excessive saving periods related to file size?

Should I remove some chapters and be satisfied with this solution?

I experienced the same problem - bought a new MacBook Pro - migrated from the old one and then noticed that both drives were almost full (478 GB)

My son diagnosed the problem and deleted the versions via Terminal.

I am now storing the files in dropbox because we are working collaboratively with authors across the country.

Strangely, it does not seem to be gobbling up dropbox space - not sure why, but will certainly keep on eye on it.

Thanks for the tip about deleting versions by option/clicking on the title.

How do you delete the versions via Terminal?

There is a way to do it safely. Go to the book title in the title bar, click on the triangle to go into version history (like Time Machine UI). Click on the right hand side to zoom out last versions, press Option and click on the last version title to delete all old versions.

I save 100GB ⚠ by doing so for most of my iBooks. Unbelievable.

If you mean the file with ~, that's more like scratch files. You can delete anytime.

Thanks for the clear instructions. I shall be deleting the automatically saved files every day now!

I accidentaly deleted the .IBA file I was working in, and would like to know if it is possible to find older versions of the file saved somewhere in my computer.

Given that there is no .IBA file, I can't access the older versions, but I think they must be hidden somewhere.

Thanks in advance