Systems Folder?, How to free up memory... Options

[alreed]

hi forum,

I'm wondering if anyone can help?

I have an iBook with a small, but sufficient hard drive of 28GB (I use external hard drives when I'm recording in Cubase or working with big files).

The problem is, even though my applications and iTunes(under User) only take up 10GB, since everything else is on the external hard drives, my hard drive says I'm using 27GB in total. That's 17GB unaccounted for! It was ok when it was 3-4GB, but 17 seems a bit much. Do I need to reinstall, or is it something wrong with my systems folder?

Any help would be REALLY appreciated, I've had this problem for the past year now!

Thanks...

[alreed]

Hello,

Thanks for the sugggestion manso. Just checked the security and the filevault's off. doh!

As far as I know it's always been off, but maybe it was switched on once and there are still encrypted filles lying around somewhere I can't find?

Supposing this is the case, where and how might I find them I wonder??

[lancet]

As far as I know it's always been off, but maybe it was switched on once and there are still encrypted filles lying around somewhere I can't find?

Supposing this is the case, where and how might I find them I wonder??

Don't waste your time.

File vault encrypts your entire user folder and only your user folder. It does so by creating an encrypted disk image of it.

Once it's turned off, it's off. If you only have one user home folder when you look in /Users then it's not the issue.

Sometimes when file vault goes bad you end up with a second user folder. This is because the encrypted image becomes unreadable and the OS is forced to make you a new default user folder.

Ce message a été modifié par lancet - dim. 25 mai 2008, 17:10.

[deaconblue]

If you open your hard drive in list mode (detailed view), click on the edit menu, select "View Options", make sure that the check box for "Calculate All Sizes" is enabled. Then look at the folders listed. It will show you the relative size of all folders in the hard drive. If you then use the disclosure triangles, you will see what all the sub-folder sizes are as well. You can then sort by size (click on the "Size" column header at the top of the window) and you should be able to begin to isolate where your large file/folder size is hiding.

If I look at my hard drive, the Applications folder is about 10.35GB, but my library folder (where all my sounds, plug ins, Application Support files, etc., are stored) is 101.1GB. If you have a few plug ins installed, depending on what they are, they can take up quite a bit of room. By comparison, my System folder is only 3.5 GB in size.

Hope this helps narrow it down a bit for you.

Peace.