Available Disc Space Problem

[MacMiniUser]

Hello,

First off, i must just say, i'm new to the Mac world, having used Windows for most of my life!

Anyway, the problem i'm having is that in finder, the "Available" disc space at the bottom of the screen is wrong, well, i'm sure it is.

Currently showing 254mb AVAILABLE!, well, it fluctuates between about 600 and 200, but, i've got the 1.25ghz Mac Mini, 256mb RAM and 40gb HDD, i've got a 160gb external HDD with all of my files on, on the Macintosh HD there's only a few word documents, a few apps, and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), well, that's all that i can see when i've been through every folder, twice, checking for the large sum that's gone AWOL!

I've tried the following:

Repair Disc Permissions
Reset PRAM

and also, my friend (an experienced Mac User) SSH'd into my Machine to try some things but also couldn't work it out.

Do you have any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[mackaveli]

hi since no one replied i did

when you say 254mb available is that for the 40gb or the 160 gb? maybe you clicked on a mountable disc image that says 254mb available? you should check macintosh HD and see how much is available on hd by right clicking and getting info.

also look for this program, omnidisksweeper, it shows you what is taking up space and shows hidden files and so forth. Its a good program, im sure its free and it usually shows all the info of what is available and what is used.

hopefully some of this info helps.

later

 

[MacMiniUser]

I'm on about the 40gb Macintosh HD, which appears to fluctuate! Now i have 515MB Available!

Running Omni now and will post back.

Thanks!

 

[MacMiniUser]

Fault fixed, for some reason, my Mac HD had been imaged to a .img file at 24.9GB!

Deleted and sorted.

Thanks again!

 

[DeSnousa]

Fault fixed, for some reason, my Mac HD had been imaged to a .img file at 24.9GB!

Deleted and sorted.

Thanks again!

What .img file did you create to be that large?

 

[MacMiniUser]

Not a clue, think it were my entire HDD, or, just some form of mess up!

 

[superbovine]

migh help

http://www.macosx.com/content/faq.php/q6922/Missing-Space-On-External-Hard-Drive.html

 

[andysmith]

Did you enable filevault by any chance?

 

[MacMiniUser]

Did you enable filevault by any chance?

don't know how?

 

[andysmith]

don't know how?

In System Prefs > Security.
It basically takes your home folder, and encrypts it in one big file. It should be a 'sparse' image, which means it grows as needed - but sometimes it can mess up.