Macbook “start-up disk is almost full”?

Question by unicorn with aids: Macbook “start-up disk is almost full”?
I keep getting this message but I have 112 GB avaliable

does anyone understand whats going on ?
i think getting the message must be related to using utorrent. I has happened in the past when using itunes but that was when i had ariund 80GB of movies and sound before i cleared all this.

Best answer:

Answer by cagin_computing
MacOS, like Linux, uses mutliple paging/swapping files (virtual memory). Some programs may be allocating space for virtual memory, and then forgetting to release that space later. This is called a memory leak.

I have seen this happen in firefox, particularly when visiting Flash web pages and/or youtube. This could be happening in any number of programs though.

Do you notice this happening after doing certain things or does it seem to happen randomly? Does rebooting your computer stop the message from popping up or do you get it as soon as you boot?

**updated upon reading additonal information**
The fix then is rather simple:
Stop using utorrent altogether… or at least dont download so much at once.

When dowloading a file, the full amount of disk space required is reserved on your hard drive. So the moment you click to download a 4GB DVD image, 4GB of space is taken up on your hard drive.

What do you think? Answer below!

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