[vtmike]

hi everyone,

I am a first time Mac user and so am a bit lost here. i recently purchased an imac g5 20" about a month and a half back. It is running Tiger with all the latest updates installed.I have a 250 gb hdd and all the data that i have is on my desktop which is about 90 gbs (basically movies and music) However when i right click on the mac hdd icon the inspector shows that i am using 212 gb's and only 20 is available where as my data is only 90 gigs. I dont know where all this space has gone. Also another thing is the system performance. It is slow compared to my friends ibook g4. both of us have the standard 512 mb ram, but my system takes ages to do the same that takes a jiffy to be done on his system like opening applications, etc. I am sorry for being so vague but since i am a first time user i am clueless here.So could they be any reasons for this lost space and sluggish performance of late.

Thanks a lot in advance
cheers

ps- i feel the switch from windows to mac has been the best thing i have done in while

[JKT]

It sounds like you have an app that is leaking memory or creating lots of temp files. Download either OmniDiskSweeper or WhatSize (freeware) and scan your hdd to find out what directory (-ies) or files are using up the missing space. Report back here when done. Note that they will show you the contents of the hidden folders that you don't normally see.

N.B. if you have multiple users, you will need to run the app under each account to see the space being used by each user.

[vtmike]

Hi JKT
thanks for the tip. i downloaded omnidisksweeper and ran a scan on my machine and there was this one application folder which was taking way too much space, and suprisingly the trash can size was being reported at 100 gigs where as it just had a few things in it. Anyways problem solved, space recovered. thanks a lot.