hard drive filling up for no discernible reason

Hi there,

Please help. Last week I had around 16GB of hard drive space and suddenly a message pops up saying I need more space as I only have 500MB left on my harddrive. I have no idea where the 15.5GB went. I clear some space and make 2GB but 5 mins later a message pops up saying I only have 500MB left again. Nothing really happened for the 2GB to reduce like that. Do I have a virus or what is going on? Very worried. Please help.

Open your hard disk and view it in List mode.
Select Veiw > Show View Options and check the "Calculate all sizes" box.

Wait a few seconds while it adds up the sizes.

Use the disclosure triangles to dig down track down what's taking up all the space.

There doesn't seem to be anything specific or out of the ordinary. It just keeps jumping down to nearly nothing.

Use an app like Whatsize or DiskInventory x to find out what's taking up your space.

Also remember that deleting a file just adds it to the trash. You'll need to empty the trash to reclaim your space.

hi guys,

I've got Whatsize and I'm trying to see what's taking up the space but honestly there is nothing I can see that wasn't there already. The trash is empty.

Around 15 gigs of space has suddenly been eaten up for no reason.

Ok so I've checked with Whatsize and Disk Inventory x and they both say that only 93GB have been used. However my harddrive has 104GB of space taken up. There are 10 missing gigs somewhere. Really confused.

First, restart and see if that changes anything.

Beyond that...give us some numbers here. How big is your hard disk (according to the Get Info window, not the sticker on the box.) How much space is available, and how much is used (according to the Get Info window again?) What do the sizes of the folders on your HD add up to, if you're looking at it in the Finder with "Calculate sizes" on. Or, if you're using another program as Aptmunich suggested, what does it report?

Hi technologist, thanks for your post. My hard drive is now reporting 17Gb of space. I don't know what was going on but I cleaned out caches and restarted finder and taskbar etc. All seems back to normal. I don't know what caused the phantom lack of space.

may i ask?

what caches did you clear out. i'm having the exact same problem and i ran diskinventoryX and restarted twice and deleted some files that were suspect, but it keeps running out. i transferred files to my external and after restart, my hard drive space was back, yet began dwindling again slowly. before i did that, my hard drive actually said "zero kb free space" and my programs paused because they didn't even have appropriate space to take up the slack. please help. any other suggestions would be HIGHLY appreciated. i should be getting snow leopard in this week, and i want everything to be running properly. stupid question, but you think there is any chance installing snow leopard will correct anything? my guess is that i will gain 6 gigs of free space, just to watch them flow away like an hourglass. how depressing is that. thank you.

I would strongly suggest you not try to upgrade to SL until you have a minimum of 15% free space on the drive. Preferably 20%.