[X Newbies] Re: How the Grinch Stole 45GB of My Hard Drive

[Gene Huh]

>
>I've done a million Get Infos on files, folders, groups of files and
>folders, etc. The only place that is showing a grossly inflated size is
>my own Users/Me folder (Get Info says it's 47.34GB), but when I look at
>it, either in the Finder or in Unix,  simply does not show anywhere
>near that much space being used for the files that are visible.
>
>Now I know that with Unix, programs and files can sometime end up in
>strange places, and can often end up being invisible, so I thought I'd
>post here in case somebody could let me know of any Stupid Unix Tricks
>(or OS X Tricks) that might help find out what's suddenly sucking up
>half my drive space, 'cause I'm stumped.
>
>Thanks,
>--Aaron*-


Aaron,

I think that swapfiles and the system logs that others have mentioned 
are not normally located in your /Users/Me folder, which you had 
already indicated was the bloated one.

In the event this is a weird directory-related error, the simplest 
thing to try is to run Disk Utility off the OS X CD.

In the event that the above and other strategies suggested here don't 
work, the following might be worth a try.  It uses the Finder's Find 
command to maximal effect, as it can indeed be used to find invisible 
files.

(I'm assuming, with a 17" flat panel iMac, that you're using OS 10.2 
or higher.  I don't know if the following works in 10.1.x.)

(1) Go to the Finder.  Use the Find command (apple-F).  Click on the 
"Search in:" menu and select "Specific places,"  then click on the 
little box named "Add" (up and to the right).  In the dialog box that 
pops up, select your "Home" folder and click "Choose."  Make sure 
this is the only checked item in the list of places to search.  This 
allows you to focus your search on your home folder (which, again, 
you had indicated is the one that is bloated.)

(2) Then, click "Add criteria..." (at the bottom) and select 'size'. 
Click "Add criteria..." again and select "visibility".  At this point 
there are probably more than two criteria listed in the "Search for 
items whose:" box.   Eliminate all criteria  but "size" and 
"visibility" by clicking on the minus sign next to (i.e., to the 
right of) the irrelevant ones.

(3) Now, set size to "is greater than" 10000 KB.  Set "visibility" to 
"all".  Click Search.  This should generate a new window with a list 
of all sizeable files that are either visible *or* invisible.  Once 
this has finished, sort the list by size by clicking on the "size" 
column header once or twice.  This should identify all big invisible 
files in your home folder.  You can repeat this search with different 
criteria as needed to help narrow things down.

(4) Hopefully there will be a culprit in there somewhere!  I'm 
guessing a series of BIG invisible temporary files, like maybe from 
lots of burned CDs or DVDs.  Let us know what you find ;)

Apologies if this is a little longwinded; since this is the X-Newbies 
group I didn't want to make any assumptions about previous knowledge. 
Apologies also if this has already been suggested.

Hope this helps,
Gene (digest mode)