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Watching GB disappear before my eyes.

Hi everyone,

I am having a rather unusual issue on my iMac, but found a similar thread here: http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/156536/macs-hard-drive-fills-up-before-my-eyes- gbs-disappear-in-minutes

Here is what is happening: My internal startup disk (250GB SSD drive) keeps filling up. This is a disk I use ONLY for applications, which aren't taking up much space. I have looked at hidden files, looked at maps of the disk to see what's eating up the space, and cannot find what is stealing the drive space. Last night, I tried to re-index using spotlight, and it kept stopping before it would finish the task, saying that the drive was out of space. It had 18GB free when I started the index, and within 60 minutes, it was down to 0 GB. Upon restart, it was back at 18GB. I have moved nearly all documents, movies, pictures, audio onto external drives, yet the problem persists. Any ideas here? I would like to just erase and start over.


Specs:


iMac - exactly 3 years old this week
2.8 GHz Intel Core i7

8GB 1333 MHz DDR3
two internal drives (SSD 250GB and 1 T)
Several large externals housing other files (6-10 TB +)

OS X 10.8.5 (would like to update, but keep getting warnings there isn't enough space!)


Thank you!

kat

Posted on Jul 10, 2014 7:45 AM

Reply
15 replies

Jul 10, 2014 7:52 AM in response to dwbrecovery

I use Time Machine, which backups both to a Time Capsule router AND a LaCie 6TB drive. I don't use util backups, but DO have MacKeeper installed on the drive. (I installed it to try to assist with this problem about a year ago, but it's only gotten worse.) No backups or archives are on this drive. It's only the startup disk and basically contains apps.

Jul 10, 2014 8:59 AM in response to dwbrecovery

I was not using encryption with MacKeeper, so that shouldn't be an issue. There's nothing to decrypt.


Right now, the app that is hogging all of the system is iMovie (as I click on one movie and drag it to another drive). It is jumping between 48% CPU and upwards of 80% CPU. Activity monitor also shows iMovie as not responding and there is a spinning beachball in iMovie itself. The spinning beachball stops once the movie is moved and CPU% goes back to normal.

Jul 10, 2014 2:51 PM in response to Kathleen Theisen-Remaud

Have a look at


http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html


And I would pay special attention to Very large log files....


Get free OmniDisk Sweeperand run it as root in order to be able to see what's happening with other users. But be very careful not to remove anything while running as root, since you will have unrestricted access to critical system files.


Open Terminal (in Applications>Utilities) and copy/paste and hit return. Give your admin pword when requested, which won't appear as you type it in. Hit return again.


sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Watching GB disappear before my eyes.

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