Something is sucking up hard drive space!

[frlane]

Hi all, I have a i7 iMac running Lion. Something is currently sucking up my hard drive space. I don't mean 'Boy I've put a lot of crap on my machine, what do I get rid of'. I mean, I have over 200GB of space last week and I have watched as the free space has slowly drained until it warns me that the HD is full. Even today I erased a bunch of items, cleared up about 20 GBs and then watched as it dwindled before my eyes back down to nothing.

Anyone have any ideas what might be causing this?

Ray

 

[MartyF81]

Install a program like Daisy Disk, and it will show you what is using your space. That can help you determine the culprit.

 

[frlane]

Install a program like Daisy Disk, and it will show you what is using your space. That can help you determine the culprit.

Running it now, thanks! Will it be able to show me what is slowly sucking this up, or just show me where an old video file is that I forgot about. I have already gone through the drive, cleared out a ton of space and with no programs running, watched as the hard drive space goes down. In fact, while typing this, I have watched my hard drive go from 167.5 down to 165.22

 

[geoffm33]

Are your time machine backups executing without the external drive attached?

Time Machine will make local backups until it can reconnect to the drive

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878

 

[Weaselboy]

Are your time machine backups executing without the external drive attached?

Time Machine will make local backups until it can reconnect to the drive

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878

Time Machine only does that on portable Macs and OP said he has an iMac, so that should not be the cause of his issue.

 

[frlane]

Are your time machine backups executing without the external drive attached?

Time Machine will make local backups until it can reconnect to the drive

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878

Time machine is currently off, but the slow decent continues......

 

[geoffm33]

Time Machine only does that on portable Macs and OP said he has an iMac, so that should not be the cause of his issue.

My bad, you are correct. Reading is fundamental.

 

[frlane]

My bad, you are correct. Reading is fundamental.

Maybe the 300GB of Mail might be part of the issue!

 

[ianray]

Daisy Disk looks nice (though I did not buy it yet). I have previously used Disk Inventory X, that provides great visualizations too.

 

[DavidEther]

Just to drop my two cents:

I personally prefer Spacie for scanning my hard drive(s). DaisyDisk is pretty but I feel like Spacie is a lot more straightforward. Just scans your disks, orders folders by the largest, and you just browse through them like Finder.