Too much space used in Hard drive

I have nothing on my hard drive (everything on external) except for about 40-50 MB of images. The thing is that my system information says that 234 GB (of a 500 GB HD) is used. I am also having freezing issues (spinning beachball) and wondering if it is related.

Thanks for your help!

Chances are very high that your hard drive is failing. Make a backup NOW! Then proceed with the following test options:

Use Onyx to check the SMART status of your drive. If the drive doesn't pass, then critical drive failure is imminent.

If the drive passes, it's NOT safe to assume that it's OK. Most SMART reporting tools rely on the drive's own assessment of its health, and the drive manufacturers are highly incentivized to wait until the last minute for a drive to be declared dying. A much better SMART reporting tool is SMART Utility. It does a more thorough analysis of the SMART data and can provide an earlier warning of a failing drive than other SMART tools. SU isn't free, but it is cheap and has a free trial, so take advantage of that.

When you try SMART Utility, select your drive on the left; on the right, select More Info at the bottom in the Tests section. In the pop-up, change from Short to Long, then run it.

If that passes, then it's highly unlikely your drive is failing. You can be absolutely certain if you like with TechTool Pro, which can do a surface scan to check for bad blocks. It's not cheap, nor is there a free trial. But it is the best tool of its class, IMO.

Report back with your findings. If the drive checks out, we can troubleshoot further.

Thanks for your reply!

Will check it out and let you know what happened.

By the way, I only just bought my iMac in September. Its a little soon for my hard drive to be failing, isn't it?

fjoseph said:

By the way, I only just bought my iMac in September. Its a little soon for my hard drive to be failing, isn't it?

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Unexpected? Yes. Unheard of? No.

By the way, you really should list your system specs for reference when troubleshooting.

OK. Thanks for your input. I am new to this, so please tell me what "specs" will be helpful. I have already backed up everything of value, and will be following your instructions a little later on today. I will be back with the results.

I appreciate your advice!

Just as an aside, these issues only began after I installed windows 7 through bootcamp. I had so much trouble with the computer (on both partitions) that I deleted the partition and windows, and I am wondering if this all might be related?

Thanks again for your time and input!

It could be all interrelated, but on the flip side, you shouldn't have been having troubles in the first place. As for specs, it'd help to know what model year of your Mac; amount of RAM; and version of OS X. Also let us know if you've replaced any hardware, especially the RAM.

If your drive checks out, you should go ahead and run the Apple Hardware Test. Pay special attention to the instructions on testing the RAM in Loop Mode.

Hi.

I have not had the opportunity to follow your instructions yet. Having router issues on top of all this :/

Anyway, moving forward, here is the system information you asked for:

iMac version 10.6.8. Amount of RAM is 8GB. The computer came with 4GB and we added 4 more. The model year I'm not sure about, but in the "About this Mac" window it says TM copyright1983-2011.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for yours!

Hi.

Sorry it took so long to reply.

Router issues resolved.

SMART status with ONYX and SMART utility both passed with zero errors.

What do you think?

Thanks in advance!

fjoseph said:

SMART status with ONYX and SMART utility both passed with zero errors.

What do you think?

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That's good news. Have you tested the RAM as per my last post?

Sorry, how do I test the RAM. I mentioned that we added 4GB of RAM, but did not replace anything.

Thanks!

If your drive checks out, you should go ahead and run the Apple Hardware Test. Pay special attention to the instructions on testing the RAM in Loop Mode.[/QUOTE]

Sorry. Will do it right now.

fjoseph said:

I have nothing on my hard drive (everything on external) except for about 40-50 MB of images. The thing is that my system information says that 234 GB (of a 500 GB HD) is used. I am also having freezing issues (spinning beachball) and wondering if it is related.

Thanks for your help!

Click to expand...

I'm not sure where Lifeisabeach got the impression that your hard drive must be failing, though of course that's a possibility.

You can try downloading the free Grand Perspective to see what is taking up the extra space on your hard drive, but I don't think that's what is causing your freezing issues.

You can also try simply running OnyX or some similar utility (NOT MacKeeper!!) and see if that improves matters.

I had an issue at the end of last year where my hard drive was filling up rapidly and I was getting freezing issues.

The reason was an email with 2 attachments that kept failing to be sent. Apple mail was then recovering the email and attempting to re-send it again and again and each time a new copy was being made on my hard drive.

I found out by installing a piece of software called omni disk sweeper.

The only way around it was to disable my email account, locate and delete the email file and then reinstate my account.

Thank you for your input! I will look into the software.

chas_m said:

I'm not sure where Lifeisabeach got the impression that your hard drive must be failing, though of course that's a possibility.

You can try downloading the free Grand Perspective to see what is taking up the extra space on your hard drive, but I don't think that's what is causing your freezing issues.

You can also try simply running OnyX or some similar utility (NOT MacKeeper!!) and see if that improves matters.

Click to expand...

Hi!

Thanks for your input!! I ran Onyx and Smart utility and both came up with no errors. Things have not improved. Any suggestions? I plan to run the Apple Hardware Test overnight tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

chas_m said:

I'm not sure where Lifeisabeach got the impression that your hard drive must be failing, though of course that's a possibility.

Click to expand...

Because spinning beachballs sometimes occur when drives start to fail? You wonder where I got that impression, then admit it's a possibility?

It could also be a irrupted hard drive. Have you verified the hard drive in Disk Utility?

Stretch said:

It could also be a irrupted hard drive.

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A what?

toMACsh said:

A what?

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Haha, wow. You can thank autocorrect for that.

It should say corrupted.