Desktop space vs overal space -- there's a difference?

A

a ronin

Gawd
Joined
Jan 29, 2003
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I'm new to OS X and I notice the system keeps prompting me about low space. I usually download files to my desktop then sort after. On a few occassions I've gotten the message and upon checking, it said zero byte when I hilight the desktop, then I check my Mac HD and I have several gigabytes available. Is this because OS X reserves 10GB or so for performance? What's the deal here as my HD is not partitioned.
 
Come on, no one likes the question or not know why? Someone has to know. Answer, damnit!
 
a ronin said:
Come on, no one likes the question or not know why? Someone has to know. Answer, damnit!
Click to expand...

Well. . .I would suggest giving people more than 6 hours to respond before following up and demanding an answer.

To answer your question, the desktop is simply a subset of the hard drive. Think of it as a folder on the hard drive. The location is /Users/<youruser>/Desktop/ So. . .as you'd imagine, if you have more than one user set up on your computer, each has their own desktop environment.

OSX does not "reserve 10GB or so for performance". It simply uses what space is available for normal swap space. But it doesn't "reserve" anything.

If you single-click on the hard drive, and then go to File->Get Info it will tell you how much total space, space used, and space available you have on the hard drive.
 
Even simpler is to just Apple+I on the hard drive to get your free space, or have a widget that shows it to you like iStat Pro.

It's definitely the same way in Windows and Linux too.
 
Optional87 said:
Even simpler is to just Apple+I on the hard drive to get your free space, or have a widget that shows it to you like iStat Pro.

It's definitely the same way in Windows and Linux too.
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If you have a 2-button mouse, you could right-click on the volume and access Get Info from there as well.

He did say he was new to OSX, so I didn't want to overwhelm with options :)
 
CreativeMac said:
If you have a 2-button mouse, you could right-click on the volume and access Get Info from there as well.

He did say he was new to OSX, so I didn't want to overwhelm with options :)
Click to expand...

Gotta learn sometime, pick which way works best for you.
 
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