[PhotoBug]

The folder in my home section named filesync is close to 4GB, Can i delete this? what is it for?

[naphtali]

My first reaction is that you might have installed a 3rd party application, and indeed I found one called FileSync

Apple - Downloads - System/Disk Utilities - FileSync

Did you install such an application?

Would help if you poke around the folder and see what sort of files are inside.


Just to be sure that it 's not a misplaced system folder, I did a Spotlight search on my system:

While I do have a FileSync folder, it's some framework in the Developer Tools folder (which will be there only if you install Xcode), and nowhere as large as 4GB, so I doubt it's the same one you're referring to. Plus if it were, you probably use it regularly and intimately to get it so bloated.

[ParContre]

I had the same problem, but it my case it was 183 GB!!! Inside the folder was a 2nd folder with just a hex number as its name, and inside that were 3 files:
<MyMacName>_iDisk.sparsebundle
SyncSets
SyncSets-journal

The sparsebundle file was the hog, and when I looked at the package contents it was just a huge number of plain text files, each with exactly 8 MB. The other 2 files were also plain text. As best I can tell, this has something to do with the iDisk feature, and from the dates it looks like I did something when I first bought my Mac about 3 months ago, probably something to do with setting up the iDisk.

In any case, I'm going to delete the FileSync folder completely and see what happens. If my Mac blows up I'll let you know.

[naphtali]

That's probably the iDisk Sync feature then:
System Preferences > .Mac > iDisk

Don't use it so was unaware that it did such things.. Sounds like something might have interfered with it and broke it? Doesn't sound like Apple to expose it

[JKT]

If you use the local iDisk synching feature, it will create a mirror of your iDisk on your local drive. By default that means you will use up to 10GB (depending on how you have partitioned your iDisk/Mail storage) for the disk image on your local drive. If you have increased your iDisk storage space by paying for more, then the local image will also increase in size. However, these are sparse images so they don't actually use up space on your hard drive that isn't filled on the image (i.e. if you only have 1GB of stuff on your iDisk, it will only use just over 1GB on your hard drive).

In short, if you don't want to lose the disk space, turn off the iDisk synching option. However, if you can afford to lose the disk space and need to have offline access to your iDisk, leave it switched on.

Btw, don't delete the folder without first switching the iDisk synching feature off!

[Apicius]

As others have said, the FileSync folder keeps the local copy of your .Mac iDisk, if you have local syncing turned on. In Leopard, the file format has been switched from sparseimage to sparsebundle, which is actually a package file that stores the data in 8MB chunks as noted above. This change was made to facilitate back up by Time Machine. Rather than backing up a multi-GB file for the slightest change, only the 8MB "bands" that actually changed need to be backed up.

All that said, there is a bug in Leopard with iDisk syncing that causes these sparsebundle files in the FileSync folder to grow in size until they fill the entire hard disk. Apple has a not-very-helpful support document acknowledging the problem at:

iDisk: iDisk Syncing takes up more hard drive space than expected in Mac OS X 10.5

For some people 10.5.2 solved the problem, but for others, like me, it is still there. My iDisk regularly chews up all my available disk space, growing to more than 200GB on my iMac and over 20GB on my MacBook Pro. There is only 300MB of data stored on my iDisk, and it is only set to be 1GB in size!

Apple made one band-aid change in 10.5.2 by adding a routine that compacts the sparsebundle file when a user logs in, but it will still start growing again the longer you are logged in.

I'm hoping for a real fix in 10.5.3!

Drew