Startup Disk Has No More Space. But I Do

This has been happening to me a lot lately. I'll leave my Mac on overnight and return to this message, or just leave the computer for 3-4 hours.

It says, "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory"
However, when I look at my memory, it'll say like 12GB of memory free.

All I leave open when I'm away will be Firefox of iTunes, etc. Maybe I'll be downloading a file that's 500MB or something, but nothing that would take up 12GB...
But when I return I have to force-quit, and restart everything.

Anyone know what's happening? Thanks

Maybe it's me...but from your post I'm not sure if you're talking about ram or hard drive space.

ram = memory
hard drive space = storage

If you're talking about ram...just restart/reboot the computer.

It also wouldn't hurt to know how much installed ram the computer has...and how full the HD is.

- Nick

My bet is that the hard drive is getting full and OS X does not have the space needed to write memory swap files to the drive. How much hard drive space (not ram)/B] do you have free? One way to check.

Thanks for responding.
So this was the message...




And then this is what I'm seeing when I look at the "About This Mac"

Yes…you're talking about hard drive space. Your hard drive is way way way way too full. You should never let your HD get more than 80-90% full. Your HD is like 98% full.

You NEED to free up some space by deleting some files…or off-loading some files onto another external storage device. And if you drag stuff to the trash can to be deleted…don't forget to empty the the trash can (it has happened before)!

- Nick

That's what I thought was happening. According to those screenshots you've got 4 GB of memory (ram). When that ram fills up OS X writes some of the contents of memory into a swap file on the hard drive. Unfortunately, you've only got a little over 10 GB of drive space and those files can get quite large.

Most of our members try to keep 15 - 20% of the total drive space as free space so it can be used for these memory files. In your case that would mean having 75 - 100 GB free. That may be more than you need but 10 GB is certainly too little.

As I see it you have a few options:

1. Remove some of the files from the hard drive to an external. It looks like most of your space is occupied by movies so that might be the place to start. If you are using iTunes to play them it is relatively easy to put them on an external drive and let iTunes read them from there.
2. Add a larger hard drive
3. Add more ram. This will mean swap files need to be written less often. Even so it would still be a good idea to free up space.

I can go on a little deleting spree...
Thanks.

Rmbxr9 said:

I can go on a little deleting spree...

Click to expand...

Just don't go too crazy...and delete important stuff!

Cause then the next issue will be..."How can I recover some stuff I "accidentially" deleted??"

- Nick

Rmbxr9 said:

I can go on a little deleting spree...
Thanks.

Click to expand...

You don't need to go on a spree.... just offload all those movies. Burn them to DVDs or copy them to an external hard drive. You're really lucky that 500 GB Seagate drive hasn't gone south with all your stuff on it.

You do have a backup strategy in place right?

Backup strategy for what?
A lot of my hard-drive is filled with nonsense I can live without.
I can clear a lot of space, or put it on an external this week.

Rmbxr9 said:

A lot of my hard-drive is filled with nonsense I can live without.

Click to expand...

If this is the case...your HD should have never been allowed to get as full as it did (indicated in this thread earlier)!lol

But I think that what Slydude is referring to is (if you have any or all of these items listed below):

- music that cannot be replaced
- videos that cannot be replaced
- photos that cannot be replaced
- spreadsheets or word processing documents that cannot be replaced
- applications that cannot be replaced or redownloaded
- etc. etc.

* Nick

That's exactly what I was thinking. Most of us have tons of that kind of stuff which would be difficult if not impossible to replace.

I was also thinking a backup might be good in case some important System/OS files got removed. Several of our members have deleted important files that caused all kinds of wonky behavior.