Unexplained Hard Drive Loss

Hi

You could check the Trash in case you have put stuff there and have not deleted them, also any burn folders hanging around that you have not emptied. Another possibility is certain HP colour printers spool print jobs in the /var/spool/cups folder. After printing the spooled job never gets deleted. You have to manually delete them sometimes. The /var/spool/cups folder is an invisible folder which you can’t ordinarily access. You could enable root user using NetInfo > Security > Enable Root User, log out and log in using the newly enabled root account. Select Go to Folder from the Go menu in the Finder and type in /var, this will show you the contents of the /var folder, navigate to the cups folder and get info for that folder (command+I), if the size equates to the value missing from the hard drive then remove the files there. Don’t forget to disable root user once you have done by reversing the process you used to enable it.

HTH

Which Library folder did you check? The one at the root level of the drive, or the one in your home folder? Neither should be that big. I have an unusually large /Library folder (16GBs) because of a lot of GarageBand loops I've acquired over the past couple of years, and my home /Users/francine/Library folder is 1.3GBs.

Try putting the folder into list view, then go to the Finder's View menu, bring up Show View Options, and click the box in front of "Calculate all sizes." Click the Size header in the window to arrange the items by size. If you click the triangle in front of a folder it will open and its contents will be displayed by size. If you are unable to find the space hog doing this, take a look at my article here:

http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html

It has a list of other things to look at and the ultimate solution using the Terminal, if all else fails.
Francine


Francine
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