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my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 2:42 pm
by marty510
my HDD keeps filling up until my drive is nearly full, why is this? I do download interviews, both TV and radio but I erase them after I put what ever I want/need on disk. Do I need to use the "wipe" program to cure this, or is there another answer. There's got to be some better answer other than wiping it.
BTW, how safe is the wipe program to use?

Thanks,
marty

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 6:46 am
by Husse
I saw another post in the forum where a wipe program wiped to much so a reinstall was needed
The disk can't just fill up....
The only thing that fills up outside home is the apt cache
/var/cache/apt
You have to find out which folder is filled....

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:41 am
by Insane1
marty510 wrote:my HDD keeps filling up until my drive is nearly full, why is this? I do download interviews, both TV and radio but I erase them after I put what ever I want/need on disk. Do I need to use the "wipe" program to cure this, or is there another answer. There's got to be some better answer other than wiping it.
BTW, how safe is the wipe program to use?

Thanks,
marty
Were you making sure to empty the trash folder after all the deletions? Unlike Windows Recycle Bin, the Linux Mint Trash folder isn't limited in size, so it can keep filling up from deletions as long as there is hard drive space.

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 7:45 pm
by marty510
I'm beginning to see the same problem after a reinstall of mint. I'm deleting WAV files from my desktop and taking a look at my HDD and seeing no difference. The WAV is a conversion from an mp3 that I unpacked from winRAR onto the desktop. Is there some default place after deleting from the desktop? What am I missing here? Clueless, especially with a 30gig HDD.

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 9:39 pm
by Fred
marty510,

Open your trash folder and delete its' contents.

Fred

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 10:13 pm
by marty510
really, there's nothing in the trash, I've checked it several times. I don't know where these files are going. It's hard to understand what's going on, or what I've actually done, which is ...I haven't made any changes other than tick "show hidden files" just in a last ditch attempt that they might show up somewhere.

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 7:41 am
by Husse
Seems strange
Make a file on your desktop with a strange name so you can easily find it.
Delete it and search for it
My favorite search is locate and in this case you must update the database first

Code: Select all

sudo updatedb
then
locate your_strange_file

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:47 pm
by marty510
Husse, I did what you said but, now my winrar will put files on desktop(hidden)and then I have to open my Desktop file browser and hit Reload in order for my freshly unpacked winrar file to show up on the desktop where I unpacked it to. I updated the database as you suggested and got this result.
Also, I still can not find the files I lost previously which were deleted before I did what you suggested. I do think my trash bin is emptying now....we'll see.
BTW, what was the data base update for?

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 2:47 pm
by Husse
BTW, what was the data base update for?
Did you notice how very fast the locate command was?
I does not search your hard disk but the database you built with "sudo updatedb"
But your problem really blows my mind

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 10:02 pm
by marty510
It blows your mind! Try finding things that are supposed to be being unpacked onto my desktop and having to do what I was saying about opening my desktop file and reloading it to get thing to show up. I think I will try unpacking something from winrar to another location and see what happens. I'll try and delete it if I can locate it. :?:

marty

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 5:44 am
by Husse
Ok - unless I really miss something there must be an underlaying cause to all this and I can't really understand what that would be - that blows my mind :)

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:45 pm
by marty510
keep thinking! I can find the desktop stuff by clicking the desktop folder, then click on reload, and have it make it to the desktop where I can find it, but I'll deal with it for awhile 'cause it's not effecting anything else that I can tell. The file(s) I'm usually trying to find on the desktop don't even show up in the desktop file until I hit reload.
I'm pretty new to Linux but this is odd to me as well :oops:

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 9:37 pm
by red-e-made
This is such a bizarre problem. It's like your hard drive is haunted. Apparently it happens more often than I thought. this thread is also about a filling hard drive. Their advice seems to be to move all of your important files off your machine in case your disk is failing, and also says:
I was finally able to log in. But about five minutes later the computer started acting wonky -- menus wouldn't drop down, programs wouldn't launch, etc. So I decided to shut down and restart. And when I restarted I encountered the same problem again -- disk full. That's when I hit the panic button. I have homework on this computer that is due tomorrow!

What was happening was that dump had set something somewhere to run itself as soon as the computer was restarted and to finish its backup. I admire its tenacity, but damn! I mean, dude, when I close down a program I expect it to close the eff down and stay down. I mean, relaunching itself after the computer was shut down?

Anyway, all is well again. All, that is, except now I am scared of dump. And there are no other backup utilities that are suitable for a single user with a single computer. Everything is designed for mammoth corporate environments with thousands of users and networking/administration issues. I tried Simple Backup but it is *too* simple, and the user interface is hopeless. Like, there is no way to specify a destination on my USB pocket disk - it has a drop-down menu only, which only sees a mount point, and you can't type into it. I've tried everything, but I've yet to get it to actually make a backup. Of course, no documentation, either.

So for now I'm just going to use Konqueror to drag the files in /home/jjj to a folder on my Windows computer. That won't help if I lose a configuration file and hose my desktop, but at least my homework is safe.

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:47 pm
by marty510
I reinstalled Mint 4 today,I hope it's not hard drive errors or something......we shall see what happens. Mint 4 IS really easy to set up, so no big deal.

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 7:40 am
by mblaker
Running Linux Mint 13 (64 Bit) Kernel 3.2.0-23
I have 5 HDD's in my computer, all 1 TB.
I have no idea how and what is filling up 4.98 TB's
Any one have any fix to this?

As mentioned above, the "deleted files" is not my issue. Also I may have downloaded maybe 10 MB's worth of stuff.
This is a fresh install of the OS.

There is absolutely no way I have 5 TB worth of data, not here at least.

I need someway around this issue, I am tired of rebooting every 5 - 10 minutes.

Thanks in advanced.
Mike

Re: my HDD keeps filling up, why?

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 8:11 am
by zerozero
please open a topic to deal with your specific problem; you won't get any support adding your post to a +4 years old topic.
besides see the forum rules point [2] http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=83444