Full hard drive then system preferences messed up

[NarKEd]

The following problem have happened to me a couple of times:
-I get a notice from itunes saying that the music library canot be copied or something like that
- I check the hard drive and I have no more space, I inmediately look for files I dont want and try to get some space like 1 or 1.5 gigs
- when I restart the computer all the system window preferences are messed up all my desktop icons are giant and in different order. all folders in the windows are differenbt size than my original settings. I have to reorder all my desktop files (and they are a lot, like 150)
- I notce that my hard drive now has more space than the space I got from deleting files (like 2.5 gigs)

then some months pass, I slowly start to getting more files until the same error occurs. and all process starts again.

why does the system window preferences are reseted, wtf with that! (os 10.2)

 

[King Cobra]

--> I have to reorder all my desktop files (and they are a lot, like 150)

Whoa, what? You have 150 items on your desktop??? Dude, seriously, you should never constantly have more than, say, 10 on your desktop. But 150 will seriously f*** up your Finder's response times!! Not to mention - and I used to keep 40 or so items on my desktop back in OS 9, so don't think I have no idea what keeping files on a desktop is like - all your files belong in organized folders...OS X is going to keep rearranging those desktop files so that you, the perfectionist, will have to rearrange them all over again. Seriously, when you have enough free time (say, 3 hours), take all your crap from the Desktop and organize it into folders. You will also see a Finder GUI improvement.

Now onto more serious matters...NEVER let the amount of space on your Hard Drive go down to less then about the amount of RAM you put in it. (My iBook has 320MB of RAM, so I keep it going with at least 0.5GB of space, and it works fine. My Cube has 1GB of RAM and over 1.5GB of Hard Drive space etc.) If you run out of Hard Drive space, or run out of space for some part of the operating system to place a file, a string, or other information, the impact on your machine can be serious. I was lucky enough to have that occur without long-term reprecussions, but for a short time, it went "ape-s***."

Now, there have been issues about Jaguar rearranging/duplicating icons in System Preferences (although that has never happened to me). First, make sure you're running 10.2.8 and all the Security Updates that Software Update will allow you to handle. If not, upgrade first...the upgrades might fix the issue. Second, try searching the forums for duplicate icons in System Preferences (and try various search terms)...discussions of such have been posted on the forums.

 

[NarKEd]

yeah I know.. its catastrofic. I have to arrange all my files one day. I did a select all-> file info and I already have the exact amount of files I have in my desktop: 185!! and seriously that was after puting some files into folders. thats the stuff thats happens when you buy a cinema display all that space needs to be used isnt it?
and thats just my desktop my computer is spread with thousands of files and folders everywhere. Ill never have the courage to organize it. lucky for me I just ordered a g5 with 250 gigs of hard drive : ), Ill probably copy the important files organize them and then reformat my old computer hard disc

 

[King Cobra]

I browsed through your 6-second calculator thread, as well...you should work up some courage (if need be, a huge cup of coffee with that) and get organizing soon. Like earlier today, I rearranged a folder of pics from [somewhere] and went into every folder within it...I had a list of 304 folders (about), and I wanted them all organized into three categories of types of pics I would view again in the future. Of course, I also went through those 304 folders to rearrange some of the structure in there, not to perfection, but to a point that meets my set criteria for how to reorganize all my s***. Well, that list is down to 74 items, since about 230 of the folders I prob. will never go into again except to waste my time. But it's easier for me to navigate into sections of the pics I want and not have to browse through a folder of 230 items that I don't browse through anymore.

Point being: I spent about 5 hours reorganizing that mess (without coffee), but I had to force myself into it. So maybe if I keep forcing you now, you'll be in the mood sooner than later to say to yourself: "Damn, let me get my damn ass over to the computer and reorganize all this bulls*** now so I can have more coffee later and not have to worry about it again."


Also, about your 6-second calculator thread and slow application start-up times...that could also be due to the crap on your Desktop, but it could also be the result of not refreshing your Hard Drive in a while or installing too much beta crap on your system that interferes with OS X.

EDIT: How long has the long-time-to-open-apps situation been going on? Because if it's been going on since the day your Hard Drive hit "full stomach," then you're due for a very near-future Hard Drive refresh.

 

[flyfish29]

--> I have to reorder all my desktop files (and they are a lot, like 150)

Whoa, what? You have 150 items on your desktop??? Dude, seriously, you should never constantly have more than, say, 10 on your desktop. But 150 will seriously f*** up your Finder's response times!! Not to mention - and I used to keep 40 or so items on my desktop back in OS 9, so don't think I have no idea what keeping files on a desktop is like - all your files belong in organized folders...OS X is going to keep rearranging those desktop files so that you, the perfectionist, will have to rearrange them all over again. Seriously, when you have enough free time (say, 3 hours), take all your crap from the Desktop and organize it into folders. You will also see a Finder GUI improvement.

I have to say this was a hilarious reply! I have an office mate who does this with her desktop and she wonders why the machine is always screwing up.

Here is a 2 minute fix...sort of...at least it will solve one major problem:
Make a folder called D-top and place it in your home folder. Select everything on your desktop except the hard drive and place it in the D-top folder. Then you have a clean desktop and hopefully you see a performance difference.

If you want your gallon-o-coffee and have fifteen hours to spare you can organize at a later date.

If you really want to organize fast...make up 3 to 5 general folders to put stuff in and go one by one and dump it in those 3 to 5 folders...don't try to totally organize...actually you might not want to look at it as organize but generalize. then at least you could cut your time drastically when searching for files, etc. This might take you 15 minutes to generalize into a handful of folders.

Ask yourself if you are spending tons of time trying to find a damn docment then an hour sorting the 150 things might be well spent.

 

[titaniumducky]

Just get a new hard drive! Internal, external - it doesn't matter as long as it's more space.

If you want to go external cheap, pickup a firewire-ide external bridge at newegg and an internal hard drive.

 

[King Cobra]

I have to say this was a hilarious reply!

Did you actually have to say that?

Make a folder called D-top and place it in your home folder. Select everything on your desktop except the hard drive and place it in the D-top folder. Then you have a clean desktop and hopefully you see a performance difference.

That works as well...but my focus was on once all your crap is in that folder, organize all your files from there. Sure, taking all of that crap and moving it into some folder on your desktop works. So for the time being, follow "the fish"'s suggestion about temprorarily moving all your files there.

I strongly recommend organizing the data eventually, because it'll be much easier, faster, and less stressful to find what you're looking for if you have all those randomly-categorized files into folders. Maybe because I'm a folder-etiquette freak is why I'm so focused on that. All it takes sometimes is a reality check: Even though it takes a couple of seconds to find a file/alias/document on your desktop, you keep going back to your desktop every day on your computer to find the file from the mess, several times a day, and you waste that amount of time in searching for something. There's no need for that. Keeping everything in folders reduces searching for the document, and the force-of-habit that you'll adopt as a result will be knowing the directory of the file, as supposed to judging the "x" and "y" coordinates of every document on your desktop.

Yeah, I'm a folder-etiquette freak.

 

[NarKEd]

I have done several times the create a folder and put all stuff there to clean the desktop, actually I have a folder in the desktop calles "stuff" and sometimes I drag all the unurganized files there. funny trhing is that some days later the desktop files start growing again and finally hits the same number of files.
Im kind of used to wortk that way, because I can find the stuff in my desktop really fast. I know where each file is located, thats why I get so puissed off when my computer decides to desorganize them all.

another thing I was thinking right now is why does it slows the performance by having a lot of files in the desktop if the desktop is really just another folder