The Increadible Shrinking Hard Disk...

[delsydebothom]

My hard disk seems to be shrinking. I know this is strange, but between yesterday and today, I've gone from 3.4 GB free (and I went on a deleting spree just to accomplish that). I woke up today, and I have 0 bytes free; my wife can't even log into her profile, and I'm afraid that if I restart the computer, I won't be able to log into mine.

Here is the strangest part: deleting files does not seem to be freeing up any space anymore. What is happening to my computer??

[dstew]

Try

sudo apt-get clean

to remove the downloaded packages of your installed programs. You can also do this from the synaptic window, in Settings --> Preferences --> Files --> Delete downloaded packages after installation. I think it will stay that way until you change it back, so it won't build up the cache again.

[delsydebothom]

Try

sudo apt-get clean

to remove the downloaded packages of your installed programs. You can also do this from the synaptic window, in Settings --> Preferences --> Files --> Delete downloaded packages after installation. I think it will stay that way until you change it back, so it won't build up the cache again.

I tried that, and it freed up 435.4 Mbs. However, I've been keeping my eye on it--now its down to 434.9 Mbs. This is getting really weird.

[dstew]

There are processes that create log files, and add to them every so often. You can look at your active processes using the top command. Maybe there is some process that is going crazy with its logs...look in the /var/log directory.

[Mr_Congeniality]

Wowsers. That's freaking crazy. If mine acts up I'll be sure to look into it further and let you know of the problem and possible solution(s).

[delsydebothom]

There are only 12.5 Megs of of logs right now. They number and size of the logs are staying the same, while my disk space keeps shrinking. I feel like everything I do is just delaying the inevitable.

[kingpoiuy]

Do a search for the largest file on your HDD.

In a terminal:

find -name '*' -size +1G

That will show you all your files over 1 GIG

Just a shot in the dark but if a single file is causing this issue then you can find it this way.

[delsydebothom]

I did have one file about a GB in size--a backup of some older files. But that wouldn't explain the continual shrinking, would it? I don't know, all I know is that I am losing about 1 megabyte every 20 minutes.

[Terry of Astoria]

What is the output from dmesg?
Type dmesg in the terminal to get diagnostic messages from the kernel.

[Terry of Astoria]

You can get more info by using

du

and - or

df

Just type

du

and hit enter
remember you can

man du

if you want.