Disk Full - investigation needs work

[jeff92677]

Many users (including me) see Hard Disk space being filled up. On a 1 TB drive I'm down to about 140 GB, but eventually the message "Disk Full" will appear.

When I run SuperDuper to make an external USB bootable hard disk, the target shows all the disk space I expect (1TB less what is reported by GetInfo on the original drive).

MANY users report this problem.

Disk Repair - Not useful
Disk Inventory - shows same set of files on both drives. Does NOT show what's in the OTHER category.

SuperDuper mentions not copying files not needed, so is the only way to clean up this problem. Copy and make bootable an external drive. Boot to the external drive, SuperDuper back to the internal drive, and it works for a while until it starts filling up again.

APPLE tech support had no solutions that work. Is this an Operating System glitch/bug in their overall design? It comes up in all recent editions. I'm running Yosemite now.

Internal Drive is a Hybrid drive, some solid state and mostly standard hard disk type.


Use google and type in "macbook hard drive full for no reason" -- a huge problem for many.

 

[jeff92677]

Many users (including me) see Hard Disk space being filled up. On a 1 TB drive I'm down to about 140 GB, but eventually the message "Disk Full" will appear.

When I run SuperDuper to make an external USB bootable hard disk, the target shows all the disk space I expect (1TB less what is reported by GetInfo on the original drive).

The two drives listed in the image have the same OS, same contents, and when I boot to the USB drive, everything looks and works the same. The internal drive is filled with garbage. The USB drive was just created (as a bootable drive) using SuperDuper.

MANY users report this problem. Do you have any idea what's going on? Is it the latest APPLE OS for MacBook ??

Use google and type in "macbook hard drive full for no reason" -- a huge problem for many.

 

[jeff92677]

I've run Disk Inventory X and MacKeeper to show all the files on the drives, both programs report the same drive usage, but the Apple "About this Mac" Storage tab shows a huge "Other" section on the internal drive.

If I boot to the external USB drive, then use SuperDuper to copy to the internal drive, I get back several hundred GB of space, then the two drives appear to be the same in terms of size and usage. But after a while, the Internal drive will again begin to fill up for no apparent reason.

 

[pigoo3]

What is "Other":

OS X: What is "other" space in About This Mac? - Apple Support

- Nick

 

[pigoo3]

Threads merged.

- Nick

 

[pm-r]

I've run Disk Inventory X and MacKeeper to show all the files on the drives, both programs report the same drive usage, but the Apple "About this Mac" Storage tab shows a huge "Other" section on the internal drive.
… … ...

Oh my God...!!!! MacKeeper rears its ugly head again!!!!

I'd suggest —*Lose it!! You'll need to Google for instructions.

 

[bobtomay]

What Mac do you have?

 

[MacInWin]

Use google and type in "macbook hard drive full for no reason" -- a huge problem for many.

I did that and didn't see that many recent posts, certainly not recent enough to say it's epidemic. What I would recommend is running Onyx (you can get it here) and run the clean up process. Just leave the defaults and it will clean caches for you. Get rid of MacKeeper and any other third party "cleanup" software. All you need, or ever will need, for that process is Onyx.

 

[chas_m]

Also, is it possible you have Time Machine turned on but no Time Machine drive? If so, it will write backups to the boot drive, slowly filling it up. I would expect SuperDuper would not copy those over, which could explain what's going on.