MacBook Pro SSD drive: need to free up space

Is Time Machine turned on? If it is it is creating hourly backups that are basically invisible to the system.

You really need a bigger drive if you are going to store 38+GBs of Audio and 7.6+ of Photo files along with 5GBs of Documents.

I've been using a computer for over 20 years and have all documents I ever created, from Work and personal, and they only total a little over 1GB. Now I don't have many database files but I do have a ton of CAD files and related docs for those CAD files.

Time to look for a larger SSD or maybe one of the Seagate XT series drives, slower then an SSD but faster then a standard spinning drive.

SSDs are coming down in price. You can get a Crucial M4, 256GB, for under $200.

Download Omni Disk Sweeper to look at all the folder and file sizes. You may find that other 40GBs is being used by the system in many smaller files. Whether or not you can delete them is an unknown.

On my MBP I have just the OS, Lion 10.7.5, and a "FEW" programs installed along with maybe 10-15GBs of downloaded and saved program install files and it is taking up over 50GBs of space. Add your 38GBs of Audio, 7+GB Photo and 5GBs of Docs and you are close to your total drive size. The OS by itself, with the inlcluded iLife programs take up well over 24GBs

The backups or 'snapshots that is created for Time Machine will automatically be deleted if the space on the SSD is needed for other uses. Read this:

http://pondini.org/TM/30.html

Ciao.

Did you Reboot the system after running that command? If not give that a try.

Also start a New TM backup and take a notice of the total amount of files it is backing up. You will need another external for this as noramlly, If TM is working correctly, it only backs up changed files after the original Full backup.

I understand that you are not backing up to the internal SSD. Time Machine creates these 'snapshots' on your internal drive. Please read the yellow box in the Pondini link for a full explanation.

Ciao.

Yeah I always forget about the sleepimage file. I turned that off a long time ago.

I have been running Lion for just over a year, and Mt Lion for part of that (Now back to Lion) and have never had this problem. As most Mac users don't. It is a glitch in the OS, is all I can think of.

You could use the Recovery HD, or the Online Recovery system, to Wipe (Re-Partition if you use the Online system) the drive and then reinstall Lion and restore only settings, programs and files from your TM backup at the first boot of the newly install OS.

ikeshima wrote:

I've managed to account for 17 GB which is being used in the 'sleepimage' file. Still another 20 GB to go.....

It would probably be easier to buy a 512 GB disc and install this. However, from what I have read with other people having the same problem, some people are losing a whopping >200 GB in space, which they can't account for in Lion.

OGELTHORPE wrote:

I understand that you are not backing up to the internal SSD. Time Machine creates these 'snapshots' on your internal drive. Please read the yellow box in the Pondini link for a full explanation.

Ciao.

That is why I asked if he had TM turned on or off. When turned off in Sys Prefs it does not create these snapshot.

Use Terminal to delete the sleep image. Google is your friend.

In all honesty this thing about Lion/OS X/Time Machine deleting files that are not longer needed when the HDD get to full is IMHO a bunch of BS. If it actually worked there would not be so many posts on "My HDD is full what do I do". Kind of like your post.

To add to that I have only a 25oGB drive I have setup as my TM backup drive. Once I do 3 backups to that drive TM states "Can't continue with backup because not enough space". So what happened to the TM feature that deletes old backups once the drive get full. Like I said BS.