HDD out of space with 50+ Gb

joey00 · 01-12-2015, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

To determine where the space is used up, maybe try:

Code:

du -hS -d 1

to see a report of the space used per directory. It will also report on hidden directories such as .config.

This command indicates that around 1Gb is free. But I just deleted more than 40 Gb!

See attached result of du...

joey00 · 01-12-2015, 10:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

Where's this 50+G of files? Largest I see is the Desktop at 445M. Perhaps a different part of the du result?

What's the output of df?

Don't include me in any consensus that feels deleted files are hiding. I don't buy that and I've not yet seen enough information to know that you do or don't have space freed up.

See other reply for

joey00 · 01-12-2015, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

Where's this 50+G of files? Largest I see is the Desktop at 445M. Perhaps a different part of the du result?

What's the output of df?

Don't include me in any consensus that feels deleted files are hiding. I don't buy that and I've not yet seen enough information to know that you do or don't have space freed up.

See other reply for du. df is attached.

I definitely moved many Gbs of files to another drive. The files no longer appear in the original directory. According to my reckoning, I should have recovered 20+ Gbs on the last operation alone. But...

And I know I do not have the space cos half my apps wont run (out of space error) and every disk test I tried shows it.

rtmistler · 01-12-2015, 10:46 AM

OK. I understand that the "free" is not showing correctly, and that 127G minus 119G is actually 14G which you say you've deleted. When you use the du command you do see that the directory where these files formerly were is not longer taking up that 14G of space? It's either gone, or smaller?

Have you powered off your system and done so via a correct shutdown? I do see that the sync command had no apparent impact, but in this case I would shutdown the system via "sudo poweroff" or via the Window manager shutdown option. And then restart and see what the state of the system shows.

Finally, you have mentioned trying to avoid reformatting the drive, so you do realize that's an option. Another option I've mentioned a few times is to boot off a live distribution, either via USB or CD/DVD and then mount your existing hard drive, and search it, remove files, etc, also run an fsck on that disk. Why? Because when running off that drive, the file system is in use, and /home is supposed to be mounted as rw (a reason why I asked to see the output of the mount command by the way), but when booted off of a live distribution, it may or may not automatically mount that internal hard drive, but you can mount it from within the live distro as read-write and then do virtually anything to the files you wish; with the presumption that you will not be removing system files just instead removing any of these recovered archive files, if any are still left. And you can run a disk check to diagnose/fix any anomalies. All else does fail, then it would seem that your main option does become to take all the data off that you need from other parts of the drive and then reformat and re-install.

As someone else said, Photorec can create some very obtuse file and directory names, so it's worth checking to see if there are other parts keeping too much space up.

joey00 · 01-12-2015, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

OK. I understand that the "free" is not showing correctly, and that 127G minus 119G is actually 14G which you say you've deleted. When you use the du command you do see that the directory where these files formerly were is not longer taking up that 14G of space? It's either gone, or smaller?

Have you powered off your system and done so via a correct shutdown? I do see that the sync command had no apparent impact, but in this case I would shutdown the system via "sudo poweroff" or via the Window manager shutdown option. And then restart and see what the state of the system shows.

Finally, you have mentioned trying to avoid reformatting the drive, so you do realize that's an option. Another option I've mentioned a few times is to boot off a live distribution, either via USB or CD/DVD and then mount your existing hard drive, and search it, remove files, etc, also run an fsck on that disk. Why? Because when running off that drive, the file system is in use, and /home is supposed to be mounted as rw (a reason why I asked to see the output of the mount command by the way), but when booted off of a live distribution, it may or may not automatically mount that internal hard drive, but you can mount it from within the live distro as read-write and then do virtually anything to the files you wish; with the presumption that you will not be removing system files just instead removing any of these recovered archive files, if any are still left. And you can run a disk check to diagnose/fix any anomalies. All else does fail, then it would seem that your main option does become to take all the data off that you need from other parts of the drive and then reformat and re-install.

As someone else said, Photorec can create some very obtuse file and directory names, so it's worth checking to see if there are other parts keeping too much space up.

The original rogue directory is now deleted. But again seems not to have affected the space.

From the maligned file manager I am seeing 1.1 Gb space now.

I have shutdown the computer several times during this saga. Using the shutdown command seems to work best atm. I have forced fsck several times on this system.

All directories shown by the mount cmd are rw including current /home/myuser.

Fundamentally, having used photorec before with no problem, I am surprised at the problems now.

The option to recover to another drive or memory stick is not too happy, since this can be very slow (especially the latter). My present run is taking 30 hours +. :-(

If I have to go back to the install disk I will reinstall. It is simpler and maybe quicker. I have copies of all important data already.

joey00 · 01-12-2015, 11:19 AM

The 50+ Gb was what was available after the last format operation.

The operations done since then were:

Run photorec until HDD full
Move recovered files off to another drive
test drive space
Check HDD
Still full!

Teufel · 01-12-2015, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joey00

If I have to go back to the install disk I will reinstall. It is simpler and maybe quicker. I have copies of all important data already.

If you have your /home copy you might to boot with liveCD/USB, re-format your home partition and restore it's content from backup. No need to re-install all the system.