MBA 2013 on 10.10.3 - free space shrinking by the minute

[VSG]

Hi, there!

I haven't seen this issue brought up anywhere else, so here it goes:
I updated my MBA 2013 to 10.10.3 yesterday. When I rebooted, everything was ok, I got the "Optimizing your Mac"-message, clicked ok. The system runs very smoothly actually.

But my free space is shrinking - literally by the minute!
I started with 20 GBs after the update.
When I started the Mac today I had about 12.40 GB - half an hour later I'm at 11.97 GB.

There are no downloads going on, Photos is not syncing my iCloud-photos (the library stays the same) ... anyone know what's going on???

Just while I typed this, I dropped to 11.94 ...

Best regards,
VSG

 

[maflynn]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

If you run it with sudo (As shown below), it will include some system files that it woud not normally have access to scan. That is a more accurate representation of what's consuming your drive.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Another option is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Like the sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper command, it will scan all directories, but produce a text file as opposed to showing the results in a window

If you have time machine enabled, it may be the local snapshots at /.MobileBackups

 

[VSG]

Thanks!

It seems to have stopped - at least for the moment. It did so at 11.77.

I used Disk Inventory X to see what was gaining space at definitely was some kind of cache. But it stopped before I could figure out which one.

Just hope it won't restart again. But I'll be on guard.
Thanks for your help!
Did anyone else notice this behavior after updating to 10.10.3?

Best regards,
VSG

 

[zmunkz]

This could just be your mac using virtual ram / swap. It is normal behavior under some circumstances, depending on what you are running at the time. You can monitor (but do not remove!) the files in /var/vm/ to see if this is the case... if the contents of that directory are growing, then you might be running something that is leaking memory or otherwise causing your mac to accumulate a large swap file.