Ran out of startup disk space on 10.4.8 update, now KP at startup

[jdc]

ok, the update was only 147 megs -- so you must have had under 200 megs of free space?

yikes!

my wifes has 36 gigs left =)

[blusubaru]

It was all the pro application updates that did it in. The OS would have been fine. And for the record I had 1gb of hard drive space left, granted, not a lot, but enough. Now there's over 2gb. I don't know if there's some virtual memory issues going on or what, but my hard drive free space fluctuates. I have a 120gb drive in there, partitioned with a 15gb startup and remainder for music storage.

[jdc]

and your 15 gig startup wasnt big enough correct?

[blusubaru]

Correct, and there's only 6gb available on the music partion side.

[jdc]

You will never listen to ALL of that music.

[elmo3]

[quote blusubaru]I have a 120gb drive in there, partitioned with a 15gb startup and remainder for music storage.
yeah, this is why I don't partition. I suspect it's why Apple doesn't particularly recommend it, either.

I learned this very lesson back in 1988, after fooling around with partitioning my Jasmine 40.

(for you younger folks: that's the Jasmine 40 *mega*byte drive. That's right--it held FIFTY FLOPPIES worth of stuff!)

[guitarist]

This is what backups are for. If you had a FW drive with a backup of your HDs's volume stored on it, for example, you could erase and restore your macbook's HD to exactly where it was one week ago, or one month ago, or one hour ago, and only lose a minimal amount of work or time.

In so many OS installs, the Read Me had reminders about making sure your hard drive is backed up. Sometimes I feel like the only boy scout out that takes this advice seriously, backing up religiously every week, so that I can restore my drive in case of an emergency.

HD space is cheap and abundant, there's no practical barrier to backing up easily and often.

I don't mean occasionally parking folders full of "important stuff" on external media, that doesn't count. I mean a full HD backup that's current, bootable, and ready to go.

If you had done this, it would have saved your bacon!

This might end up being inspiration to consider doing it in the future?

I hope you can sort out the Install error, and get your macbook happy and running again soon. Keep us posted.

[GrumpyOldMan]

I'd try this:

Connect to your messed-up Macbook via FireWire target mode. Can you do a "repair disk" on the FW-mounted Macbook disk from the host computer? If so,do that.

If I were you, I'd do this:
1) buy another external disk (maybe 250 GB ) and an external FW/USB2.0 enclosure.
2) copy all your useful data to that (use ditto from the command line or CCC); don't copy system files since they're probably messed up from partial upgrading.
3) when done, reformat your Macbook disk and get rid of that stupid partiioning; I don't know what you were thinking when you did that.
4) Reinstall 10.4 on the MacBook, run all updates
5) Reinstall all your 3rd-party apps, install all updates
6) copy back your files from 2) to your Macbook.
7) When satisfiied that everything is OK, reformat your new external FW disk and set up a reasonable backup solution (Retrospect or BRU) and backup your MacBook every night while you sleep.

And NEVER let your disk get that low on space again! UNIX needs room to work (your swap space can easily be several GB when doing actual work).

[blusubaru]

I thank you all for your quick answers. I'm not new to Macs, please don't insult me with the "hard drives are cheap and abundant, backup often" routine. Unfortunately the jump from a 120gb drive to a 160gb is a bit more than I can afford, so that's why I was out of space. I do back up, but never the user folder. Why is that? I've never had a crash to the point that I could not save anything. I've also never lost a hard drive. Yes, in 18 years using Macs, I've never lost a hard drive.

And I do listen to nearly all of the music. I can verify that with the iTunes play count.

[onthedownlow]

Boot up holding the left Shift key...