Disappearing Disk Space

[snake021]

We are having a **** of a problem with drive space "disappearing"!
Basically the server does not release space once things have been deleted. At first we found a lot of things in the network trash folder; however that was only a small percentage of the missing space. All in all we are missing about 15GB. We are only using 2 shared volumes at the moment (2 x 34GB). I have installed cocktail as well, to clean up any caches etc that might be lurking around.
Our current setup is 1x160gb ADM partitioned into 5 volumes. We have about 10 logins for ppl to access the server. It is running 10.2.8 build number 6R73.
There is amix of OS9 and OS10 users logging in.

Any way, has anyone ever heard of something like this happening? Any advice?

Thanks
Snake

 

[BruceBodger]

Have you resolved your problem? Having the same problem here running 10.3.2.

Thanks,

We are having a **** of a problem with drive space "disappearing"!
Basically the server does not release space once things have been deleted. At first we found a lot of things in the network trash folder; however that was only a small percentage of the missing space. All in all we are missing about 15GB. We are only using 2 shared volumes at the moment (2 x 34GB). I have installed cocktail as well, to clean up any caches etc that might be lurking around.
Our current setup is 1x160gb ADM partitioned into 5 volumes. We have about 10 logins for ppl to access the server. It is running 10.2.8 build number 6R73.
There is amix of OS9 and OS10 users logging in.

Any way, has anyone ever heard of something like this happening? Any advice?

Thanks
Snake

 

[tomsonline]

I am having the same problem on my Powerbook running 10.3.6. The system tells me that I've got only about 6 GB left on my 80GB (74 actual) drive and yet when I go to the finder and do an APPLE-i on the hard disk it only totals 39GB!! That's a lot of missing space (about 30GB in fact).

Where has it all gone and what should I do to fix it.

As a point of reference. The machine is only 3 months old, I've installed and run Diskwarrior (which did nothing) and am now considering reformatting my hard-drive on Thanksgiving.

Can somebody help!

 

[Macman]

@ snake:
have you tried repairing permissions? thats ounds really weird, are you by chance using a swap partitioning system? if so, your system may not be dumping swap files, besides that, Im not sure what could be cauing this,
although sometimes, the finder wont give you correct avail. space, try using system profiler in the utilities folder to see the true space, or try copying a file larger than the available space onto it and see what it does.
@tom:
the only time you should run disk warrior and rebuild your directory is after a system crash after restarting and discovering files missing or preferences reset or your dock empty for example. dont reformat the drive, just use system profiler, most likely finder just isnt updating the space, in which case Id say repair permissions.

 

[tomsonline]

Thanks for that - I have tried repairing permissions - as for the swap filesystem - I don't think that I am - how do I check. Finally, do you think that Virtual PC could be causing this?

 

[Macman]

when you first set up your mac with partitions, there would have been an option to use swapfile partitioning, if you didnt select that option, its not swap. Im not sure if VPC could be causing this, but maybe. Im not real experienced with VPC, tried it, didnt like it, its gone, but it could be something in the options for vpc, maybe if its using a lot of virtual memory to compensate for ram if you set it up that way, then it'd write files to the hd taking up space to use as ram, but these files are usually temp files, so Im not too sure.

 

[tomsonline]

Yes I agree - looks strange - when I looked VPC was setup to use 15GB for it's hard drive. It's not actually using this and until it was running this was not actually mounted. Anyway, like you I don't like it and it's now gone. Unfortunately my space isn't back. It seems that VPC was holding some space without actually partitioning it. I've come to the conclusion that rebuild is in order. It's never fun but it's always rewarding to know that you've got a brand new install!

I appreciate all your thoughts and help. Happy ThankGiving.

Tom

 

[flonejek]

If you're using any filesharing apps (e.g. mlmac, azureus, poisoned) most of them dont use sparse files and can set the filesizes wrongly, so you end up losing space to nearly empty files, though I'm not sure why finder would show only 39Gigs being used..?

 

[tomsonline]

OK I've done a re-install and have my space back. God knows what it was. I'm not using any filesharing apps. Backup almost got everything right first time. Not bad really.

Thanks for your help today.

Take care.

Tom

 

[SuperNova]

Hi,
I also have this problem, however on a much smaller scale. I'm running 10.3.7 and until I buy a bigger HD, I only have about a G left. It seems that whenever I empty my Trash, my available space decreases...
I've heard that it might be a Virtual memory related problem, but how do you manage VM? Can I turn it off completely?
Thanks

 

[Macman]

Hi,
I also have this problem, however on a much smaller scale. I'm running 10.3.7 and until I buy a bigger HD, I only have about a G left. It seems that whenever I empty my Trash, my available space decreases...
I've heard that it might be a Virtual memory related problem, but how do you manage VM? Can I turn it off completely?
Thanks

what OS are you running? os x automatically manages all memory, so unless youre still running classic, its automatic.also, try secure deleting files, as files deleted are never all the way gone.

 

[sylvestermott]

I use poisoned, and I think I may be having this problem. Does anyone know how to fix it? what happens is whenever I secure empty some files the free space goes down instead of up.

If you're using any filesharing apps (e.g. mlmac, azureus, poisoned) most of them dont use sparse files and can set the filesizes wrongly, so you end up losing space to nearly empty files, though I'm not sure why finder would show only 39Gigs being used..?

 

[bassplayrr]

I don't know if this has already been brought up, but I was having this same problem when i had File Vault running. Sometimes when I would shut down my computer File Vault would recover the unused space, other times not. Once I disabled File Vault I have never had the problem again. It's probably not, but that may be part of your problem if you are running File Vault as well.

-Chris