Virtual Memory SWAP is filling up HD: "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory"

Question

Virtual Memory SWAP is filling up HD: "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory"

I'm getting messages stating "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory." I've determined that my system memory is rapidly reducing after the MacBook Air is left on with only the Activity Monitor and Terminal open.

MacBook Air Stats:

11-Inch, Mid 2011

Processor: 1.8 Ghz Intel Core i7

Memory: 4GB 1333 Mhz DDR3

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000 384MB

Software: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3

My SSD drive space is rapidly reduced after the "free memory" is almost completed used - the MacBook then starts using the SSD drive as virtual memory and almost uses that space (I have a 250GB drive with 60GB available when I start the mac). Everything works great for the first 5-10 minutes, then I see the "free memory" decrese until it's down to about 30MB or so and then the SWAP used increases until my hard drive is almost totally out of space and gives me the error above. During this time the MacBook Airs little fan turns on.

Result: I can only use my Mac for about 30 minutes or so until I have to restart due to the HD being filled up by the virtual memory SWAP. The Mac is also very slow during this time as you can imagine.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks so much!

Scott

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Mar 14, 2012 1:00 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Mar 14, 2012 2:03 PM in response to scottfrombellevue

That can happen for two reasons:

(1) You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or

(2) You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.

Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination. In Activity Monitor, click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table once or twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. Repeat with the Virtual Mem column. If one process (not including "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more memory over time without ever releasing it.

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 14, 2012 10:39 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks Linc! I found a process that was causing all the problems and I can't remember the name of it off hand, but I think it had to do with BackBlaze. Anyway, I really appreciate your help!

Scott

Reply

Answer 3

Nov 11, 2012 9:15 AM in response to Linc Davis

Linc - Where do I find the virtual memory information? The bulk of my 4gb of physical memory is tied up into Safari, SymDaemon, kernel_task, and photosmart. I dont know what those last three are. I see I have VM size of 240GB

Reply