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Recover invisible missing space on your iDisk Apps
I recently discovered that my iDisk was almost full. At least that's what the .Mac preference pane was telling me. While my local iDisk showed only 8 MB used, the preference pane was showing 92 MB used. I tried all sorts of things to fix it: I turned off local syncing then turned it back on, I ran Backup, and cleared the Backup folder (even though I never use Backup), but nothing worked.

I finally turned off local syncing again and mounted the iDisk in the Finder. I discovered that my Public folder (which looked empty to me) contained over 80 MB of files. But I couldn't see them in the Finder.

Firing up the Terminal, I cded to /Volumes/my_iDisk_name/Public/, and looked inside. Sure enough, when doing ls -al (the -a shows invisible files), I found a handful of temporary files with names beginning with .fstemp. After deleting these files, my space was reclaimed. However, these files must have been generated when a sync was unable to complete. For some reason, the iDisk server didn't erase them. So, if you suddenly lose space on your iDisk, have a look in any folder where you might have tried to sync files to see if there are any such temporary files hanging out.
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Recover invisible missing space on your iDisk | 6 comments | Create New Account
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81.7 vs. 25.7 MB
Authored by: spaminacan on Feb 04, '04 12:27:20PM

Wow! My local iDisk indicates 25.7 MB of use while the preference pane/manually mounted iDisk indicates 81.7 MB used. When I follow the steps in this hint I find no files with .fstemp in their name, but two other files do show up. This is what I see:

total 8
drwxrwxrwx 1 unknown unknown 2048 4 Feb 11:53 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 unknown unknown 2048 23 Oct 02:03 ..

Should I delete these? Are they my problem? If so, HOW do I delete them? If they are not the problem, what should I do next to find it? Sorry for these noob questions but I am completely unfamiliar with the terminal. Thanks.



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81.7 vs. 25.7 MB
Authored by: restiffbard on Feb 04, '04 02:58:11PM

Just to clarify for you.

. is the folder that you are in
.. is the folder above the folder you are in.

so if you type "cd ." then you'll just change directory to the directory your in.

if you were to type "cd .." then you'll change to the directory above the one you're in.

Just to make it simple for ya. Unix considers everything a file. Devices are files. Folders are files. Everything is a file.

So, now ya know. :)



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Recover invisible missing space on your iDisk
Authored by: kirkmc on Feb 04, '04 12:59:47PM

Don't delete them. They are standard files in a Unix-type file system.

However, did you check all your folders and sub-folders for those .fstemp files?



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Recover invisible missing space on your iDisk
Authored by: manolosf on Feb 13, '04 11:12:56AM

I am having this exact same problem. I'm trying to use this method to retreive the idisk space I paid for. The only hold up is that I'm new to the Terminal command window and don't exactly know how to enter the terminal commands to access the iDisk folder and then to delete those unwanted files. What is the proper way of entering and executing the commands?



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Recover invisible missing space on your iDisk
Authored by: mgseeley on Apr 14, '04 02:17:22PM

You don't have to use the terminal to delete the .fstemp files. Mount your iDisk on your desktop - not a local copy but your actual iDisk. then use the find command in the finder to search your iDisk. Set the first search term to NAME->CONTAINS "fstemp". Add a second search term set to VISBILITY->INVISIBLE ITEMS. The results will list all the .fstemp files. You can then select all and delete them.



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Recover invisible missing space on your iDisk
Authored by: manolosf on Feb 13, '04 11:14:20AM

I am having this exact same problem. I'm trying to use this method to retreive the idisk space I paid for. The only hold up is that I'm new to the Terminal command window and don't exactly know how to enter the terminal commands to access the iDisk folder and then to delete those unwanted files. What is the proper way of entering and executing the commands?



[ Reply to This | # ]