where did my hard drive space go???

J

justin1083

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hi all. i got a 100 gb powerbook about six weeks ago, and i've noticed the hard drive space seems to be shrnking faster than i'm adding stuff. since last night, it seems like 6GB just went missing. i'm not sure if you can check the system to see where everything is going, but i looked at 'get info' for everything, and had 10 gb of movies, 3.6 of photos, 1.2 of music , and 1 for documents. so we're up to about 16gb. i'm not sure how it breaks down, but the applications folder has a total of another 10, for a total of 26 gb. but my system says i've used almost twice that (48 GB). the only other thing that seems to be taking up space is my user folder (the one with the house icon). that says its using 16 gb, but i'm not even clear what's in there. it looks like mostly duplicates of my applications and documents folders, etc. is there any way to consolidate all the copies of the stuff on my HD? is there any way to find out where exactly all the memory is being used? what's the home/house folder even for, if i'm the only one using this thing? i hope this makes sense...thanks!
 
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All of your documents, movies, music...your "files"...should be in your Home/user folder. Everyone on a computer should have a Home folder of her own, and nobody should be able to access anyone else's files.

If you copy a file/folder from anywhere else on the system to your home folder, the system will Duplicate, rather than Move, the file.

To find out "where everything is" on you hard disk, open the hard disk and choose View > Show View Options and then click the "Calculate All Sizes." You can then drill down, repeating this as necessary, until you see something unusually large.
 
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have you checked your Trash? Just because you put something in trash...doesn't mean it's gone forever...whatever is in the trash is part of that totally amount used of hard drive space...you can delete it all by right clicking and Emptying the Trash can
 

iWhat

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Try out this free app called Disk Inventory X to see graphically what is taking up the space. You can use it to view the whole HD or just a folder. It might still be hard to figure out what is doing this, but you might find what it is suddenly taking up the space.

http://www.derlien.com/
 
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Also if you have FileVault enabled it is a space hog and needs to clean up when you log out or shutdown.
 
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iWhat said:
Try out this free app called Disk Inventory X to see graphically what is taking up the space. You can use it to view the whole HD or just a folder. It might still be hard to figure out what is doing this, but you might find what it is suddenly taking up the space.

http://www.derlien.com/


exactly what i was going to recommend...always listen to iWhat (when it seems reasonable...whatever that means)

-chris
 
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Don't forget about the misnomer about what 100GB of space means...some is used by the operating system, but 1 gigabyte is 1024 MB, so take that into account (i.e., my 20gb has 18.49GB of space)
 
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also dont forget that iTunes copies all the music you have to its own folder so you have may your music collection twice as it were
 
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have you checked your Trash? Just because you put something in trash...doesn't mean it's gone forever...whatever is in the trash is part of that totally amount used of hard drive space...you can delete it all by right clicking and Emptying the Trash can

im pretty sure a trash can would empty itself before it filled up to 6 gb.
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it always helps to give your hd a thorough looksie before you claim bytes missing.
 
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Gert Frobe said:
im pretty sure a trash can would empty itself before it filled up to 6 gb.
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it always helps to give your hd a thorough looksie before you claim bytes missing.
The Trash won't empty until you empty it yourself.
 
OP
J

justin1083

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yea, the default documents/etc folders are linked to the ones in the user folder, cause when i modify a file in one it is modified in the other. as for calculate all sizes, there isnt that option in my view options menu...is that a feature of a special program?

technologist said:
All of your documents, movies, music...your "files"...should be in your Home/user folder. Everyone on a computer should have a Home folder of her own, and nobody should be able to access anyone else's files.

If you copy a file/folder from anywhere else on the system to your home folder, the system will Duplicate, rather than Move, the file.

To find out "where everything is" on you hard disk, open the hard disk and choose View > Show View Options and then click the "Calculate All Sizes." You can then drill down, repeating this as necessary, until you see something unusually large.
 
OP
T

Tel

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Last night my iBook started acting quite slow, I was getting quite worried and then it gives me a "low disk space," warning, only 100MB left. First thing I do, empty the trash and what d'you know, 9GB freed up instantly.
 

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