[G4] Hard Drive Bloat

[Robert A. Rosenberg]

At 20:44 -0700 on 08/02/2004, Lavode wrote about [G4] Hard Drive Bloat:

>Hi all,
>
>I have a Yikes/400, with 2 20gb Hard drives.  One acts as a backup for
>the other, and I occasionally use CCC to image my startup disk to the
>second drive.  I have noticed I can no longer burn DVDs without an
>error message from the finder indicating that I need at least as much
>space on my hard drive as there is on the DVD.  I usually keep around
>5gb free.  However, I recently got an error saying I was about to run
>out of room!  I cleaned house, then checked my most recent image on the
>second drive.  Even after house cleaning, my primary drive has 3 gb
>less than the backup I made a month ago!  I have not added that many
>new apps, nor do I save huge files to the drive.  I have compared the
>folder sizes of what is visible between the primary and backup drives,
>and they are almost the same.  So where is this 3+ gb going?  Anyone
>have any ideas on what I can do to reclaim this lost space?
>
>TIA,
>Lavode

One thing that can cause the disk usage to go up is watching lots of 
DVDs. Every time you watch a new DVD for the first time, its Desktop 
files get copied to your Boot Drive never to get deleted/removed 
again. These files are hidden so unless you look in the correct 
directory (using a "Show Invisible/Hidden" option) you'll never know 
they exist or be able to clean them up. Getting rid of them frees up 
space and the only downside is that you lose your bookmark of where 
you left off viewing the DVD and need to recopy the files if/when you 
view that DVD again.