Mac memory issue

Campion

I have a mac ibook g4 running on os x. All the space in the harddrive is disappearing (and gone), and I'm not quite sure where to start on fixing this problem.

Misanthropic

Are you losing space, i.e. one day you have 80 GB total with say 40 GB used and the next day you have 70 GB total with 40 GB used, or one day do you have 80 GB total with 40 GB used and the next day you have 80 GB total and 60 GB used?

Also, check to see what iPhoto and iTunes are doing, if you use them. Sometimes their libraries can become corrupted, and part of how the applications auto-repair that is by duplicating files.

If nothing else, backup what files you absolutely need right this very second. Just in case.

Epyon9283

You could use the du command in the terminal to see what is using the most space.
This should give you a rough estimate:

du -h -d 1 /

If you want to go deeper up the depth from 1 to whatever or just run the command on a different directory.

You could also use something like the following app to get a visual representation of the disk space usage:
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/

Campion

Unfortunately I couldn't get to that jdiskreport before the book had to be turned off. Fortunately this seems to have corrected whatever problem there was. The available space (which was decreasing, not the capacity) has returned to what I assume is the normal amount, and it's staying there.

Would not turning off an iBook for a while cause this problem, or should this still be looked into?

ben0207

Thta's the most bizarre issue I've ever heard of.

Leave it for now, use it normally, but if it does it again then you should look for some help (or reinstall)

UFOff

Hey, I have almost the exact same problem as you. Strange thing is, it only started when I made the jump from 10.3 to 10.5 (I skipped 10.4).

Hard drive space disappears gradually, but after a restart, it goes back to the original amount. I think it has something to do with Dashboard running and the fact that I only have 768mb of RAM. I've had this issue for a couple of months, and while annoying, doesn't appear to be anything serious.

FF

Sounds like it could be running out of RAM, which would then use the disk for RAM space, maybe Dashboard (like UFOff said) or some other application/process taking up RAM and not releasing it. It also sounds like it could be cache or temp files filling up the HD, which would be solved by turning the iBook off and back on again.

Doing an upgrade from 10.3 to 10.5 sounds...risky, however that may just be my own paranoia because I don't like doing OS updates that way.