Why is Boot Drive Filling Up?

[IronMac]

Hi all,

As some of you know, I have an MBP with an SSD as a boot drive. Running 10.6.8. I've noticed that the free space on it is disappearing and I don't know why. In the course of a week, I can lose over 10 gigs. If I shut down and restart, the free space comes back.

Obviously, this has never happened before and so am wondering if a setting has been changed somewhere.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[tenders]

Run the app "Grand Perspective" - it just takes a few seconds and shows how much space is allocated to each file on the drive. Especially given the prevalence of smaller SSD drives, I think it should be part of Disk Utility that's bundled with the MacOS.

You probably have a swap file taking up space,but are feeling the pinch because of other large files that don't need to be there. For me it was excess iMovie files from a long-ago project.

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net

(Note misspelling of app name in URL - perhaps a language inconsistency.)

[sekker]

If you've added RAM, the OS will save a copy of the RAM in the boot drive partition in case you run out of power, etc. I experienced this when I went to 12GB from 4 - essentially lost 8GB on my SSD.

Another boot drive space hog is photostream, but I don't think you have that turned on if you are using SL. But if you have the latest iPhoto, I'd check. That's a terribly poorly written program in my experience, comes with my issues than ever.

[deckeda]

sekker wrote:
... Another boot drive space hog is photostream, but I don't think you have that turned on if you are using SL. But if you have the latest iPhoto, I'd check. That's a terribly poorly written program in my experience, comes with my issues than ever.

I looked inside the library package file but didn't notice them. I've created a shared photostream but most of the images weren't added by me. If I right-click on one in iPhoto there's an "Import" feature; apart from low res previews I don't think they are stored on my Mac.

[space-time]

3 letters

N S A

[IronMac]

tenders, thanks...have Grand Perspective...love it!!!! Will try it later to see what is going on there.

sekker, nope, no new ram...still at 8 gigs...and no photostream. iPhoto...maybe but I have added no new photos.

space-time, that made me LOL.

[RAMd®d]

I love GrandPerspective.

It also allows you to delete that block of "RAM memory", though it will come back on a reboot.

[IronMac]

Not sure what I am supposed to look for...certainly I did not see "Ram memory".

I did find a massive TechTool Pro folder that was weirdly named from a year ago. It was "SWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW" and so on. A whole gig was taken up with it!

[space-time]

RAMd®d wrote:
I love GrandPerspective.

It also allows you to delete that block of "RAM memory", though it will come back on a reboot.

To remove the sleep image file: sudo rm -rf /var/vm/sleepimage

To disable safe sleep mode: sudo pmset hibernatemode 0

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/22/why-hiber...ary-in-os/

[IronMac]

Thanks space-time!!!