PRAM using 10gb!

Hi guys, Ive recently been having issues with my macbook running out of disk space, despite the fact that I have around 20gb free. I'll see that 20gb disappear over a couple of hours after a PRAM reset and it just doesnt seem right at all.. Im using 10.7.5 on a mid-2007 black Macbook.
Any ideas?

How big is your hard drive and a PRAM reset isn't what you think it is. Please give us more information about your Macbook..

Its the A1181,

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
250GB HD
Intel GMA X3100 144 MB Graphics
OS X 10.7.5

20GB out of 250GB is not good at all. You need to ideally leave about 20% of you disk to keep OS X happy, and that's like 50GB. You might want to look into moving some stuff to an external drive or some other backup scheme..

So the system using 20GB is normal? It does seem to be the PRAM because every time I reset it I get another 20GB free on my HD.

Jageaux said:

So the system using 20GB is normal? It does seem to be the PRAM because every time I reset it I get another 20GB free on my HD.

Click to expand...

The system needs free HD space for the swap file. The PRAM reset requires you to restart the computer...which sort of "resets" everything...which just reclaims the 20gig.

Then when you start using the computer again (after the restart)...the 20gig is used up again (temporarily)...until the swap file uses it. Etc., etc., etc.

You need to either delete/remove/backup some items from the HD to free up more space...or replace your HD with a larger capacity model.

- Nick

Surprised it is even running at all well with such little free space. Time to really bite the bullet and create free space or consider a larger hard drive as Nick suggests.

Ditto the above.

Jut a restart would reclaim the space - no need for the reset.

You need to seriously free up some space on the drive.
It's still going to run slow as molasses with 50GB free at this point without a defrag.

Hi Jageaux

The things you might consider moving to an EHD from where you can run them when the EHD is mounted include: iTunes Library (open iTunes>preferences>advanced and it will show the iTunes Media Folder. Use Finder to locate this and copy it to the EHD). Use iTunes app to search for and link up with this copied library. Having confirmed that it works, delete the library from your Mac Int HD. This will free up a lot of space if your music library is large.

You can also move your iPhoto library and, if you have one, your Aperture library to an EHD. They will run from the EHD when linked. This should enough; but if desperate, you can move your Documents to an EHD as well. BUT leave your Home Folder where it is. Don't move anything else.

Of course as Nick and Harry say, you could pay the money and get a larger Mac HD. Whatever you do, backup using Time Machine, a cloning software like CCC or SuperDuper.

Ian

Thankyou guys. I will just go with the EHD idea. I just had no idea that 20GB was considered as tiny! I thought it was acceptable to just have 2GB free. Thanks for all your help!

20GB is plenty of free space ... if you're not doing ANYTHING with the computer. The minute you start to use it (particularly if you don't properly close programs) it starts eating up that space for temp operations. That's why when you restart the space magically comes back -- you weren't quitting programs as you go, which is what you should be doing. Hint: "red dot" doesn't quit most programs, just closes the active window.

Yeah, I always cmd-Q programs to close them and I close them all before shutting down. Time for a new mac I think... or.. dare I say it... Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is going to run slow with 8% free space also. Even with Linux, when you start hitting less than 20% free space - for sure less than 10%, it's time to upgrade to a larger drive. Every OS, including Linux will start having slow down issues when you begin running out of free 'contiguous' space.