I opened my MBP today and the memory had gone from 60 GB to almost 120. I cannot find any large files in my storage.
I hate when that happens! And unfortunately I've seen it several times before. It can be caused by any of a number of things.
Try running one or more of these free utilities, which might help you find out what is taking up all of your free disk space (they all work a bit differently, so it might be worth downloading and trying more than one:
DiskInventory X (free)
Disk Inventory X
or
GrandPerspective (free)
GrandPerspective
or
OmniDiskSweeper (free)
OmniDiskSweeper and OmniWeb - The Omni Group
or
jdiskreport (free)
JDiskReport Downloads – JGoodies
The most common cause of this sort of problem (in my experience) is that your OS is detecting a software error (which might be minor),
and that error is being written to an error log over and over continuously, causing the log to balloon in size until it consumes all of the free space on your hard drive.
Out-Of-Control Cache or Log File.
You can test to see if this is the problem, and in the process clear out the offending log, by downloading:
ONYX (free)
Titanium Software | Operating system utilities for Mac - OnyX
and use it to clear out all of your log files using:
Maintenance --> Scripts
and/or
Cleaning --> Logs
See if that helps.
If it doesn't, other possibilities are that:
- Time Machine is creating backups on your main drive itself
Disable Time Machine Local Backups in Mac OS X Lion
- Dropbox (if you have it) is automatically syncing files to your computer
(Go to the Dropbox gear wheel which is at the bottom right of the Dropbox drop down menu. In the window that opens, choose Advanced. Next to the title Selective Sync:. click on Change Settings. Uncheck all the folders/files you do NOT want automatically synced to your computer. )
- Your laptop is creating and storing a huge "sleep image"
http://www.macworld.com/article/53471/2006/10/sleepmode.html
See:
OSX Tips Where did my Disk Space go?
for the mother of all suggestions on where your hard drive space may have gone.
Please let us know what ultimately solves the problem for you. Good luck.