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Hard Drive Mysteriously Filling Up?

over 8 years ago from , Principal Product Designer at WillowTree

We have a lot of folks in our office (including me) who's hard drives are mysteriously filling up. Everyone with the problem is a designer, so I wanted to see if others are having the same issue.

Things to note - Yes, we have carefully chosen which files to selectively sync from Dropbox - Yes, our trash cans are empty - Yes, we have run diagnostics with tools like GrandPerspective or OmniDiskSweeper and they do not reflect the problem correctly. Meaning they report the logical amount of disk space being used, while Finder says we have little to no space left. - Apple thinks this may be a problem with Creative Cloud.

30 comments

  • Denis RojcykDenis Rojcyk, over 8 years ago

    I'm using Sketch (I'm not sure if that applies to Creative Cloud too) and sketch is saving revision files while not deleting the older ones. Which results in huuuge chunk of space disappearing.

    I would recommend downloading DaisyDisk and run it as an administrator. I think you will find a folder called .DocumentRevisions-V100 being the problem.

    8 points
  • Søren ClausenSøren Clausen, over 8 years ago

    I experienced that After Effects took up a lot of space for its cache.. Are you using AE?

    1 point
  • stella mac, over 5 years ago

    I think you could download dr.cleaner which could help you delete the junk files and temporary files. what's more, it could also scan the big files. www.drcleaner.com

    0 points
  • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, over 8 years ago

    One other place worth looking is the Adobe cache folder for video editing files (for AE it's set to 100GB by default and will keep filling up every time you use it).

    Whenever I had this problem I just started digging manually with the info panel. You could also use Clean my Mac's 'Large Old Files' tab to see what the biggest files and folders on your HDD are.

    0 points
  • Andrea MontiniAndrea Montini, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    Had same problem here when I suddenly got my HD low to 1GB free space left and started to investigate. After a deep research, I've found other people facing the same issue. So, as some of you already mentioned, I'm erasing the document revision folder on a monthly basis freeing up to 30-40GIGS each time! Thinking about running an auto script which does the work for myself.

    0 points
  • Mike Brisk, over 8 years ago

    Just did this and freed up 400GB, holy cow! Thanks!

    0 points
  • c kizerc kizer, over 8 years ago

    I keep my 500GB SSD hard disk tidy. Recently I've been running out of disk space. I started deleting a bunch of old movies. I didn't think the v100-Documents folder would be big. I just deleted the contents and got back 267GB. Yes for real. I use Sketch, Dropbox, After Effects, Xcode, and time machine.

    Screenshot of the disk space I got back: http://kzr.me/image/32150n0y1t0Q

    Apple should have definitely removed old revisions when I was running out of disk instead of having me delete movies I loved.

    0 points
  • Miguel Solorio, over 8 years ago

    I found that the Creative Cloud app was adding newer versions of the apps I had (Photoshop CC, Photoshop 2014) under the "Updates" tab. I went from having 6 CC apps to 12, and that took up a ton of space. Might be worth looking into.

    0 points
  • Claude AyiteyClaude Ayitey, over 8 years ago

    I use Disk Inventory X (www.derlien.com/) to find such mysterious files. I cleaned some 7GB last week. It's an effective tool, I love it!

    0 points
  • Daniel ArcherDaniel Archer, over 8 years ago

    I'd recommend CleanMyMac 3. It gets rid of language files and cleans up your whole Mac pretty effortlessly. I've saved 20-30+GB on a first clean. Also great for freeing up RAM when things get a little slow. http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac

    0 points
    • Marc HottingerMarc Hottinger, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

      I recommend not using such software at all… instead either ask a professional or a computer geek to check your computer's health frequently.

      0 points
      • Chris ColemanChris Coleman, over 8 years ago

        As a computer geek, there's nothing I love more than keeping people helpless and afraid of their computers. Please, bring all your problems to me.

        Also, I love googling things for people.

        0 points
  • Eric REric R, over 8 years ago

    I had this issue as well on my office computer which is a Windows. The issue is caused by temporary photoshop files while the program is opened.

    0 points
  • Taulant SulkoTaulant Sulko, over 8 years ago

    I had the same problem with Yosemite on my 2011 iMac 27''.

    Apparently there is a memory leak bug that comes with the latest MacOS. I could not find any way of fixing it other than just wiping my hard drive and starting fresh. My time machine had all the files that I needed so it was fine.

    0 points
  • John PJohn P, over 8 years ago

    If GrandPerspective is cataloging from the root of the disk then it certainly should point to what's taking up space.

    Without figuring out where the space is going I don't think anyone can help you we'd just be stabbing in the dark. It could literally be anything.

    0 points