My iMac SSD drive has started filling up. After about three days I get a warning that the disk is full. If I reboot the computer, the size goes back to normal, (38 GB used, 212 GB available. The drive then starts filling up again. I have used omni disksweeper, but can find no extremely large files.
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SSD drive mysteriously filling up
- Thread starter DLary
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What apps are you using. Some times applications will use it as a scratch disk and can get a little crazy. Apps that I have experience with that I know do this are: Photoshop, Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, Rapidweaver and even browsers.
Still over 100GB getting filled up sounds kind of insane.
Still over 100GB getting filled up sounds kind of insane.
I had something very similar to this a year or so ago - and in the end, after painstaking hours, it turned out to be my Azureus application writing obscenely huge logs to the drive... not saying that's what your issue is, but it might be worth eliminating!
It wasn't easy to spot, cos when you search the local drive for large files, the logfiles are hidden / system files, so don't show up in the standard search
I will look up my notes, cos in the end, someone on here pointed me to a great app that takes a snapshot of all of your files / hard disk space that is being taken up, and it was that app itself that allowed me to first diagnose the issue (if not the cause)...
Hope it helps
It wasn't easy to spot, cos when you search the local drive for large files, the logfiles are hidden / system files, so don't show up in the standard search
I will look up my notes, cos in the end, someone on here pointed me to a great app that takes a snapshot of all of your files / hard disk space that is being taken up, and it was that app itself that allowed me to first diagnose the issue (if not the cause)...
Hope it helps
checked my notes...
apparently the brilliant app i found was called Disk Inventory X - which is available on a free download
My issues was I discovered several asl files in the path private > var > log > asl that were several GB's in size. Having done some very quick investigation into this, it would appear that it is / was a common problem - relating to error log files... in my instance, caused by a rogue Java piece of code. In my case, I switched my main torrent app to uTorrent, and problem solved!!
apparently the brilliant app i found was called Disk Inventory X - which is available on a free download
My issues was I discovered several asl files in the path private > var > log > asl that were several GB's in size. Having done some very quick investigation into this, it would appear that it is / was a common problem - relating to error log files... in my instance, caused by a rogue Java piece of code. In my case, I switched my main torrent app to uTorrent, and problem solved!!
I used an external drive with an image of my SSD drive. After bootup, I can watch the drive used size start to increase. It will go from 38GB used after start to about 43GB in about 5 minutes. However, after the drive reaches around 43 GB used, the size drops almost instantly back to 38GB used. The whole process then starts over again. The SSD drive just continues to fill up until it can hold no more.
I am going to reinstall Snow Leopard and restore with a time machine backup. Maybe that will fix the problem.
I am going to reinstall Snow Leopard and restore with a time machine backup. Maybe that will fix the problem.
I did a time machine backup from a full backup file. Same problem. I then did a backup omitting all system files. Did a clean install and restored the backup without any system files. Started out at 34 GB. An hour later it was at 48GB and increasing. Now I guess I will do a clean install with no time machine restore and see what happens.
all sounds a bit strange but i have heard of TM doing some odd things with hard disk space..
sounds like you're doing the right thing - would be interested to hear how you get on!!
good luck
sounds like you're doing the right thing - would be interested to hear how you get on!!
good luck
Download Grand Perspective (direct download link) and let it analyze your SSD. It's free.
It will tell you how all files on that drive uses up your drive space, which ones consume the most, and so on. I always use this when I'm running low on space. It use to answer questions like these within seconds.
Just hover your mouse pointer at the different blocks of drive space to see which file's using that space in the status bar. The blocks are organized by which directory they're stored in. You can also select the blocks and then choose to reveal the files in Finder.
AFAIK, this utility also searches hidden files, but I can't swear on it.
It will tell you how all files on that drive uses up your drive space, which ones consume the most, and so on. I always use this when I'm running low on space. It use to answer questions like these within seconds.
Just hover your mouse pointer at the different blocks of drive space to see which file's using that space in the status bar. The blocks are organized by which directory they're stored in. You can also select the blocks and then choose to reveal the files in Finder.
AFAIK, this utility also searches hidden files, but I can't swear on it.