Can I delete "/.DocumentRevisions-V100" "

Alan Goodall wrote:

Ok - thanks - you will see that I have asked Link for clarification re EXACTLY which folder )or part) of the .DocumentRevision-V100 folder I can delete.

Forgive me, but I think you're getting a bit scattered. I've answered that 2 or three times.

You cannot delete parts of that folder via the Finder or WhatSize -- that will corrupt it.

You can either delete old versions of selected files via the Versions browser, or delete the entire folder. That's it. Period. No other options. Ok?

will this also delete my last remaining saved version of my iBOOK ?

No. Again, the Versions database contains the old versions of things that have been changed or deleted.

The current file contains, well, only the current version. It will not be deleted.

If so - should I restore this afterwards from a backup copy?

No. But, as always, do be sure you have good backups first, in case something goes wrong.

Re /private/var - this is now confusing as the list of file sizes goes folders 192.7 MB, db 809.2 MB and vm 4.36 GB, log 51.4MB - svereal others as Kb's and others as zero

VM contains system swap files and the sleepimage file. Depending on how much RAM you have and how you use your Mac, 4 GB is fine.

So where have all the other GBs gone?

Probably in hidden files/folders and/or ones you don't have permission to see via the Finder (it shows zero in such cases, not the actual size). Use WhatSize to find the big stuff.

Alan Goodall wrote:

. . .

Re var and the 'big stuff' - as I said above What size shows 71.3 GB as Trash. What 'trash' is this? I have securely emptied the trash.

Earlier you mentioned a trash folder inside the Recovered Files folder, which seemed to be that size. See my reply there.

In the WhatSize screenprint, there's seems to be a .Trash folder inside /private? Again, use list or column view to figure out the hierarchy.

Both are different from the normal trash folders.

Alan Goodall wrote:

. .

Is it now safe to delete these - driectly from What size?

As long as you don't need them, yes.

Very odd that there are so many of them -- that ususally indicates some sort of hardware or software problem, power failures, etc.

Alan Goodall wrote:

Thank you again - this has now given me 176 GB available - which is superb!

Yay! 🙂

Below is the latest photo grab from What Size. The private now seems to be just the sleep image (as normal?)

There's a whole lot of critical other stuff there, too, but yes, that's a reasonable size. It will probably grow, but if it more than doubles, you might want to take a look.

I think I will start again - and make each chapter a new iBook to keep below the 2Gb limit of Apple for iBooks. However, I am disappointed that this may also mean I cannot optimise the photos for Retina displays (as this takes each photo file size up from abou 3-400 kb for a 1024 x 1024 to around 30MB for photos of 5000 x 5000 ie as they recommend for Retina displays)

I don't use iBook, so can't address that. You might want to check and/or post in the iBooks forums.

And as long as you don't make any changes to them once they're in your iBooks files, the changed ones won't take up space in the Versions database.

In relation to your suggestion above - I do have other 1TB hard drives.So, should I use one of these to creat ALL my new iBook files (rather than on my 250 GB i7 Flash Drive)? All my 'assets' are on another separate Firewire hard drive

That's one approach. Access will be somewhat slower, of course. That may or may not be significant.

Another is, once a book, or some chapters, are pretty well finished, to delete all old versions of those particular items.

Think about how long you've been doing this, with how many projects -- all of it took about 70 GB. If that was a long time and many projects, then selectively deleting might be the way to go. Even if it takes a lot of space, as long as you know what it is and how to reduce it (and solve the other problem), that may be worth it. As long as there's enough free space for OSX to operate properly, it shouldn't matter. No reason not to use the space.

How can I avoid a repeat re DocumentRevisions and private/var (that you and Link have now solved) - for each of these new chapters on the separate drive?

Those are (apparently) two different, unrelated things. Address them separately.

There's a separate Versions database on each volume. I suggested that thinking it may have been damaged, as a way to limit the consequences if you had to delete it. So it might not gain you much, if anything.

There's only one /private system library, on your OSX drive. I'd recommend just watching for the Recovered Files folder to reappear. If it does, try to figure out what happened that might have caused it. Power failures, app or system crashes, unexpected hangs or slowness might be involved.

Any advice re choosing the best 'work flow' in working with large media files in iBooks Author would be greatly appreciated (I cannot find anything on the iBooks Discussions)

Try posting there, asking for advice.

😎

Late reply, but I just upgrade to Lion.

I can Delete the folder, and give myself read-write permissions, and the folder will show up in the Trash, BUT I cannot empty the trash.

I've set the entire folder to read/write, and applied to the content.

But, I get an error 22 when I try to empty the trash.

And,

I've tried "deleting all old versions", and the file DOES NOT GET ANY SMALLER! I removed 5 pages from a 10 page PDF in Preview, and it doubled in size.

I would move to something other than Lion, but my early 2008 Mac Book Pro can't cope.

HELP

Ellen

Well, it would not let me edit, so here is my edit:

OK, never mine. I was trying to securely empty the trash (my default). It would not do that. BUT, when I set it to just empty, the nasty files went away.

BUT, my PDF is still 2.2MB, when it has half the content that it did when it was 1.1MB. Yes, I deleted the old versions. Yes, I used the default preferences to globally set the versions OFF. It still does it. This versions/auto-save is a very bad thing - even Microsoft made versions optional.