[as2]

Mac OS X has gone wacky on my mac, and it's driving me crazy!

I was running out of HD space on my mac, and so was buning some CD's of stuff to free more space up, but I still had about 150MB or so left on the startup disk...

Then mail started doing crazy things saying it could not write to the mailbox or something, and iTunes could not write to the iTunes library..

Well, anyway, I freed up some space (About 2GB) and re-started my mac in the hope that it would start working again....

Oh no... far from it.

I lost all my preferences from Mail, and have had to put all my account info back in, and other preferences.

The finder forgot all my preferences, and now I can't change the view of the 'My Computer' folder, it just reverts back to really small icons, and no alphabetical sorting again.

Any suggestions as to why my computer might have done this??

Adam

[cpac]

Originally posted by as2:
Any suggestions as to why my computer might have done this??

well you nailed it: it's because you ran out of free HD space.

When you quit various applications like Mail and whatnot, there was no room for them to write their preferences to disk so those preferences were lost.

Now that you've freed up some space new settings should stick, but in general you'll want to keep at least a gig free, especially if you burn a lot of CDs...

As for continuing problems, something more important to the system than Mail's prefs might have been lost and thereby be causing all the problems. If things don't shape up, your best bet might be a clean-reinstall of the system software...

[as2]

Originally posted by cpac:
As for continuing problems, something more important to the system than Mail's prefs might have been lost and thereby be causing all the problems. If things don't shape up, your best bet might be a clean-reinstall of the system software...

I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that, but might have to now. Might buy a bigger HD before I do it though!

Adam

[gorickey]

Originally posted by as2:
I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that, but might have to now. Might buy a bigger HD before I do it though!

Adam

Yeah, good idea...if you are always in need of burning off data to save space, you definitely need a bigger HD for sure.

[as2]

Originally posted by gorickey:
Yeah, good idea...if you are always in need of burning off data to save space, you definitely need a bigger HD for sure.

I think I'll probably get a 120GB drive to put in my little green iMac...

I can always just transfer the drive to whatever mac I buy when I upgrade in about 6 months time.

If only I wasn't a poor student i'd buy a new iMac now...

Ahh well.

Adam

[MasterBeta]

Also, keep in mind that if you are using the Finder's CD burning you will need about 700MB if free space just to burn a (full) disk.

I don't know about Toast.

bd

[wataru]

Originally posted by MasterBeta:
Also, keep in mind that if you are using the Finder's CD burning you will need about 700MB if free space just to burn a (full) disk.

I don't know about Toast.

bd

Toast doesn't cache things before burning like the Finder does. You might want to get Toast if you burn a lot with little free space left.

[dru]

This just happened to me too. I wasn't even burning a CD. Suddenly I couldn't print a PDF.

The error only told me "an error occured" and nothing printed but I had half-a-gig left.

Suddenly the Finder quit on me and came up with the default settings. I was ! Apple for not saving any backup of user settings. Damn them!

I had to reconfig the dock, view settings, even the menu clock wasn't right! This is TOTALLY unacceptable and a major violation of user guidelines. Helloooo, Steve, how about WARNING the user before loss of data occurs? Hmmm?

[Cipher13]

Did the same thing to me. Rather stupid, really.

What did you use to burn the CD's? The Finder? If so, it creates an image of the data then burns that... (read: makes a 650-700 meg file...)

[DaedalusDX]

120GB is a Good Thing™. Just a word of warning however... shop around if you're going to be buying a new drive for your iMac... and be forewarned that there are heat concerns with the iMac... it originally shipped with a 5400 rpm drive, right?

There's probably a good reason for that.

Although, if you're looking, you should seriously consider Western Digital's Caviar WD1200JB... the special edition with 8MB of cache. It runs at 7200 RPM, but according to storagereview.com's review... http://www.storagereview.com/article...D1200JB_6.html

the WD1200JB runs cooler than any other 7200rpm drive.

I just recently bought one for my G4 for only $145 at www.googlegear.com. I highly recommend it.

Originally posted by as2:
I think I'll probably get a 120GB drive to put in my little green iMac...

I can always just transfer the drive to whatever mac I buy when I upgrade in about 6 months time.

If only I wasn't a poor student i'd buy a new iMac now...

Ahh well.

Adam

[as2]

I use toast almost exclusively to write CD's.

I use iTunes very occasionally, but haven't used it for a few months so I wouldn't have thought it was because of that.

I've got everything back to how I want it now apart from the finder stil does not remember my preferences for the 'my computer' window.

It's very frustrating, as the icons are so small I can hardly see them.

I've tried trashing the finder preferences, but still no help.

Does anyone know if there is a different preference file used for storing this data?

Also, was thinking about getting a 5400 drive. I've already upgraded from 10GB to 40GB... not I've just got to find somewhere to back up all my stuff before I change the drive!

Adam

[Kenneth]

Get a bigger HD is a must in your case.. backing up data to CDR is fine but not for long run solution. HD is not very expansive these day. Check dealmac.com first. I have my WD 120GB Special Edition since last Summer on my iMac 333... it works great.

[Xeo]

Had the same issue on my iBook. Definitely a major pain in the arse. I wish it would simply *not save* preferences rather than delete them entirely. I'd rather have un-updated prefs than no prefs at all.