Hard Drive Full??
 

I recently noticed my hard drive(40GB) on my eMac(10.3.7) is 98% full. I used TinkerTool to show all directories/folders including those hidden and I can not find what is taking up all my hard drive space. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Try checking all the home directories first. (I've foud that that's usually where stuff tends to acumulate).

Open finder,
Macintosh HD -> Users

Hit Command + 2 (View as List)
Hit Command + J (Show View Options) and check the box next to Calculate all Sizes

This will cause the file size for the folders to be calculated and shown on the right hand side of the Finder window. (This will take a little time. My personal home dir has 39.5 GB in it right now :o )

Find the home directory that has the most stuff in it and double click on it to enter it. Set the view options for this folder also, and repeat the process until you find out where all your stuff is.

Chris

The 3rd-party utilities "OmniDiskSweeper" and "Disk Inventory X" will help show you where the disk space is going.

Alternatively, open a Terminal window and enter the following command:
sudo du -h -d 1 /
Look to see which sub-folder is taking up the most space and repeat with that folder.

thanks hayne & weltonch777! I'll give it a shot and see what happens...

BTW, I don't think the tip about home directories will work. The problem is that your user doesn't have access to most of the folders in other home directories, so the Finder can't actually determine the space that's in use. Use hayne's tip instead.

To add to haynes post, adding the -c option to the du command and you will get the grand total... Using du -ch will give the total in Megs of Gigs... Gives a quick idea to see if the issue is in fact the /Users folder.
Could trun the command du -ch /Users/username for each user to see if one is bigger than others too if you want to start with a general idea.

I'm still having a hard time finding whats taking up all the hard drive space. what exactly does that command look like? i'm not real knowledgeable about using terminal.

Look at

man du

for all the options of du.

Better yet, use one of the GUI-tools hayne suggested, du is more helpful for home-directories you do not own.

You don't need to be knowledgeable about using Terminal (which is an application under /Applications/Utilities). just follow my directions above (post #3). Type in the command (or copy & paste it from here) and then press Return. Copy & paste the results back here if you have difficulty seeing which sub-folder of the hard-drive is taking the most space.

Or you could use the Finder. Open your hard drive in column view, press command-j to show View Options and click on Calculate all sizes. You can then work your way through large folders looking for large files that you no longer need. This method won't show hidden space gobblers like swap files, but it could be useful.

well, i used Omni Disksweeper and Whatsize and both show that there was only about 8GB used on the hard drive. but when i go to the disk utility it shows 37GB used on the 40GB hard drive! i'm also getting the "boot disk is almost full" error message. i will post what results i get when i use the terminal command.

well i tried all the suggestions and still do not see a directory or file that is taking up all the hard drive space! i guess i'll just reinstall the OS.

Do a search for files over a certain size, say 250 mb.... One of our G4's at work was saving a 'disk image' of every CD I had burnt in my home directory (not sure why) but once I had found them and binned them I saved about 14gig

bit of a long shot but worth a look

:rolleyes:

I've done a search and even used utilities mentioned above but nothing seems to show up. The utilites say there is only 7GB used on the HD, but when I go to the Disk Utility it says 37GB is being used, and the eMac is definately acting like the HD is full. I'm stumped, but I'll try another search.

The GUI utilities have the weakness that they won't see any files that your user account doesn't have permission to read. It is quite possible that some program has saved files with permissions that prevent your user account from reading them.
To sidestep this difficulty, you need to use the command-line (Terminal) method that I explained in post #3 above.
Just try it, and if you have difficulty, show us (via copy & paste) what you typed and what response you got back, and we can guide you.
The key point is that with the 'sudo' that starts the command indicated above, you will be asked your administrator password (the administrator is usually the account of the first person to create an account on this Mac).

I ran the termincal command and this is what I came up with:

Last login: Fri Apr 29 16:11:59 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
[emac:~] admin% sudo du -h -d 1 /
Password:
29G /.Trashes
0B /.vol
11M /Acrobat Reader 4.0
812K /AdobePS Components
2.8G /Applications
128M /Applications (Mac OS 9)
1.5K /automount
3.4M /bin
0B /Cleanup At Startup
0B /cores
8.0K /Desktop Folder
du: /dev/fd/3: Bad file descriptor
681M /dev
42M /Documents
13M /ExamView Pro
0B /File Transfer Folder
1.5G /Library
52K /Network
0B /Network Trash Folder
109M /private
2.1M /sbin
1004M /System
331M /System Folder
0B /TheVolumeSettingsFolder
0B /User Guides and Information
697M /Users
373M /usr
4.0K /Volumes
37G /
[emac:~] admin%

did u empty ur trash??? the fifth line has trash at 29g....

Yes - that is your culprit.
But note that the folder /.Trashes (at the top level in the drive) is not the user's Trash (which is stored in ~/.Trash under the user's home folder). Instead /.Trashes is a folder containing other trash folders from mounted disk volumes.
Some of these might belong to other users and hence would not get emptied when your user empties the trash.

Let's look more closely at that /.Trashes folder with this command:

sudo du -h -d 2 /.Trashes

This is what comes up:

Last login: Mon May 2 09:41:30 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
[emac:~] admin% sudo du -h -d 2 /.Trashes
Password:
0B /.Trashes/0
0B /.Trashes/101
0B /.Trashes/501
29G /.Trashes/502
0B /.Trashes/503
29G /.Trashes
[emac:~] admin%

That line indicates that the 29 GB is in the Trash belonging to a user with numerical id 502.

To find out which user that is, run the following command:

id 502

Then log in as that user and empty the Trash.