Start Up Disk Full

[lpadmin]

I keep getting Mac users that are getting the Start up disk is almost full message. When I look at the Storage tab in About this mac I am seeing around 50 to 80 gb if space being used by "Other". I tried using a program called daisy disc to help find what the "other" is. So far I have not been able to find what is taking up so much space. Has anyone else had this issue or have recommendations on places to look?

Thanks

[Chuey]

I've had this issue with the /private/var/folders growing in size. What OS are you having this happen on? 10.9, 10.10, 10.11 ?

[gregleeper]

You can use Omni Disk Sweeper to find the data. Give it sudo privileges and you can delete anything you need to.

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

[jonnydford]

I would do a sudo du -sh /* and dig down.

It could be Document Revisions (we've had this issue with Sketch).

http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/20/clear-versions-history-auto-save-cache-data-in-mac-os-x/

#!/bin/sh
defaults write -app ‘sketch’ ApplePersistence -bool no

[bpavlov]

@jonnydford I like using "du". However I think this might be a little better:

du -d 1 -h /path/to/folder

Because at that point you get results for at least one level in subfolders and see where most of the space is being taken up. I almost always look at ~ since that's usually the biggest culprit. It can sometimes be files in ~/Library that the user may not be aware of. But sometimes it can be outside of the user home directory.

[b_mike]

Are you downloading the web version of Daisy Disk? It has administrative ability to report on things that the Mac App Store version cannot due to sandboxing restrictions. If you have the MAS version, just move it to the desktop and then download the web version. It will see the MAS receipt and you can then delete the mac store version.

Look for "Scan as Administrator" and you'll know if local time machine snapshots are part of the "other" or if it's runaway logging or files in the system area. Most likely you should be able to correlate the total user space from /Users and subtract that from the total storage size to see how much space is "missing" in the overhead/system/non-user space.

[CasperSally]

10.9? There's a OS issue where cache isn't cleared properly when multiple users use a computer (such as lab, etc). Let me know if this sounds right and i'll dig up the script we used to run. This was fixed in 10.10.

[lpadmin]

Thanks for all of your suggestions, I will try them out and see what I can find. We are currently on 10.10.

[yan1212]

Similar to the response from @Chuey, I find /private/var/folders to be the culprit. Have a look in there ( sudo du -sh /private/var/folders/ ) and see what it returns.

I have a fairly basic extension attribute that looks at the size of this directory and a smart group linked to a policy with a script that cleans it up when required. This is fairly harmless and has been discussed in other threads - see here: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=10555

Hope this helps.

[Chuey]

@lpadmin @yan1212 I have a basic EA calculating size of /private/var/folders and then i have a script that will run on logout to remove all user accounts and clear that folder: /private/var/folders.

My issue was having a mobile cart(s) of macbook airs with over 50 users on each one. When deleting private/var/folders I noticed it was still growing in size and it was due to an icon service in Mavericks replicating icons for all users causing the space issue. This is why I have to remove accounts from machine, remove /p/v/f, and reboot. Fixed my issue and worked really well until I updated all my machines to 10.10.5 and that issue is not present.

[AVmcclint · Accepted solution]

My favorite apps for visualizing your hard disk usage are DiskInventoryX and GrandPerspective. They are both very similar to WinDirStat in the Windows world. I've found runaway log files that were 50GB in size with these apps. DiskInventory is easier to use, but GrandPerspective is a little more stable.

[lpadmin]

Thanks again for your help, DiskInventoryX really helped to find all of the large files we could get rid off.

[AVmcclint]

update: It appears that DiskInventory X is officially dead. GrandPerspective is still being maintained. https://sourceforge.net/projects/grandperspectiv/