Late Wednesday evening, I started getting almost constant warnings from TechTool Pro 5 that one or another Volume was dangerously close to having no space available!
What? How can that be? I just the day before did some 'spring cleaning' and brought my boot Volume up from 27GB to ~87GB free! The other partition on that drive was never less than 150GB free. The external 1TB drive, also with two partitions, had ~80GB free on one and ~50 on another. The smaller one has a Tiger boot system on it and I never add or change anything there more than a few times a year. The larger partition there is used for Time Machine and several other archives several times a week. But even on that partition, I had removed ~20GB not more than a few weeks ago. What is going on? And where did all that free space go?
It only took a few dozen warning dialogs to convince me that something was rotten in TechTool Pro. That was the app that was giving me the warnings. Actually, it was a Preference Panel doing it. I opened the Panel and realized I had not limited its Directory back up feature to my main boot Volume. It was backing up every Volumes Directory and at least two backups were being kept for each one! My first move was to simply turn the backuping (is that a word...
) OFF! That should stop the warnings.
But it didn't, every thing in the Panel had to be stopped/turned off. Then I removed the Panel from the Prefs! nothing like shooting a dead horse while it's down...er, somthin' like that!
I then discovered that I had now lost "ownership" of the drive! Simply removing or transferring a file to the Volume required my password! Just what I needed...something to keep me off the streets!
Short story: Visited the TTP support site and posted my problem.
Then I visited their forums and found that they had only this week decided that we should probably turn that backup procedure OFF until they sorted out the problem, several others had the same loss of space as I had. Further questioning confirmed that is was safe to simply delete any and all those back ups, at least for now, even though their protective uses would also be lost.
Next job, recover control/ownership of
MY drive!!! Using DU supposedly repaired the Permissions, first run had the usually long list of ignorable items, except for one that it claimed to fix but it always came up on the next run (/usr/share/Java/derby-10.5.1.1). Sure looks like a Tiger file? Repairing
PermissionsDisk first run took almost 3 hours to fill the window with errors and corrections. And, yet, it still indicated that 24 minutes remained before completion...and it still said that several hours later. "Do you think that's correct, Jim?"
The computer is always right, right? Mostly... I finally gave up and used Force Quit to put DU out of its misery. So, as my son used to say when he was barely three, "wha-nelse?" Some surfing and Terminal command entries confirmed that I was still persona non grata, as far as the drive was confirmed. Brewed another pot of (stronger) coffee, turned off the phones, locked the doors and hoped no one in the neighborhood would here my screams if I screwed up and opened Terminal!
Tried a few unix attempts to 'repairPermissions' and 'repairVolume'. Always got the "must have ownership status to do that stupid" replies. (and, yes, I was in the correct Directory...) Almost went the chmod and/or chown road but decided to try the, hopefully, safer "Get Info" method. I never said I was the bravest bleeding edger around!
Selected the Volume, used Get Info, added myself to the "invited and honored guests" list. I
was accepted, but still requested to 'sign the guest book upon entry.' Went back to the Get Info window and, this time, respectfully and with authority granted with my purchase price, told the System to change all the enclosed stuff with my appropriate R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (I am very near Stax, ya know...). So far, even though it took most of the last seven hours(!), it seems to have worked!
I have also moved/deleted many duplicates and regained some 75GB on that TM Volume. I'm still only back up to 20 some odd GB on the internal boot Volume, however. Will be burning a few data DVDs tomorrow...
Perhaps the combination of excessive Directory backups causing loss of available space made the OS 'decide' to take control away from me before it was too late?
Moral: Read the fine print before jumping off the bridge!
Edited to correct and add some details that were fogged by my sleep deprived brain.
