New .Mac iDisk sizes gobble up drive space for those who sync

When Steve Jobs announced a ten-fold leap in .Mac storage space, most of us were generally happy to hear it; I know I was. For those of us, including myself, who have been synching their iDisk to use it more or less as an online backup drive however, this good news had an unfortunate side effect in the form of lost local storage space. Because of the way iDisk synching works (a setting you must enable in the .Mac System Preferences pane), the amount of free space on your local hard drive will diminish according to the size of your iDisk. This is because your Mac keeps a disk image that serves as a constant backup of everything in your iDisk - that's part of the advantage of enabling the synching feature because you can retain a copy of everything in your iDisk even when offline, and sync any changes you make once you get connected again.

Before the upgrade, .Mac offered 1GB of total storage between .Mac email and iDisk storage, so synching one's iDisk like this didn't gobble up too much space. Now that this total storage has been raised to 10GB, the tables have turned a bit for us synchers, and especially for me since about a month ago I paid for the next tier of storage (I know - I've been bit by the Apple update bug again); imagine my surprise when my iDisk instantly went from about 1.5GB in size to 19GB.

But how can we solve this problem? There are a few solutions, so you can play with these and see which fits best with the way you work.

The first solution is perhaps the more obvious: log into your .Mac account online, go to your account management page and readjust the balance of storage between .Mac mail and iDisk storage. You can knock your iDisk storage as low as you want and perhaps gradually increase it if your iDisk activity grows in the future. There's room to play there, but you get the idea.

The next solution, the one I originally opted for but have since double-backed on, is to turn synching off. You can still quickly mount your iDisk anytime you need it - assuming you're online - via the Go > iDisk > My iDisk command in the Finder (or cmd-shift-I). If you're mounting it for the first time after a fresh restart or login you'll experience a slight lag, but after that your iDisk should act almost as snappy as it did when you kept it synching. The only problem here, and the reason I'm rethinking this, is the catch with being offline: I'm not offline very often, but when I am, I still need my iDisk, so I just downsized the amount of iDisk storage I have allotted and I'm re-synching as I write this. For those who work differently however, turning off synching is still a viable option: if you're always connected or you simply don't need iDisk files both large and small always available at your fingertips, shutting off synching altogether could solve your storage issues.

The final solution I have is to simply start using your iDisk to store more stuff. After all, with a ton of extra space now you can really let loose and keep a lot more stuff in there, making it online, backed up, sharable by moving to your iDisk's Public folder and accessible via a browser on any web-connected computer in the world. That's a darn handy tool when you think about the possibilities. I'm moving more folders of documents and other files to my iDisk since it is now a pretty spacious and effortless way to store files, share them between Macs that keep my iDisk synched and back them up online all in on fell swoop.

No matter what solution you come up with, I'm not sure how much Apple can do about this considering how the iDisk seems to fundamentally work right now. It sure would be nice if the iDisk could simply expand automatically as you add files to it instead of taking a massive bite out of your hard drive, and who knows, maybe that's something we could see in the upcoming Mac OS X Leopard or beyond. For now, if your iDisk is cramping up your hard drive, it looks like you'll have to get a little creative.

thanks Mr. Gaskell

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When Steve Jobs announced a ten-fold leap in .Mac storage space, most of us were generally happy to hear it; I know I was. For those of us,...

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eric

I was stubbed to see my local Hard Disk drop in size practically overnight. I only have 5.6 GB available. So I tried the solution of going to the preferences and turning off the syncing fucntion, the rebooted. But still, even with my iDisk turned off and unaccessible off line, I'm still way low on HD volume. What must I do to recuperate space?

August 19 2007 at 12:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Maria

You know, I noticed that the amount of space left on my hard disk was a lot lower than it had been. I just figured that I'd gotten behind on listening to and deleting the podcasts and video podcasts that are downloaded to my Mac every day. But this explains it. Duh-uh.

Thanks for the possible solutions. I think I'll start storing more stuff there, as you suggest. I've already moved my offsite backup to an FTP server I have and automated it with Fetch.

August 13 2007 at 10:14 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Eric

If you are worried about disk space now, just wait until Time Machine gets here as part of leopard.

August 13 2007 at 9:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Chartier

#14: I've heard of issues with not only the iDisk but many online storage systems having issues with files of that size. I'm pretty sure that's quite a bit larger than Apple intended for iDisk use. It's really more of a document backup and simple website management, not a large-scale backup solution. For files that big you might need to find a more seriously backup provider or stick to local hard drives and burning optical media.

August 12 2007 at 3:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

iamdigitalman

Does anyone else have problems syncing large files? I transffered a few isos to my iDisk for backup, it started to synch, and after a few hours (!) it said "syncing failed". It also did this on a large, 6gb dummy test image I did to see what it would do.

and yeah, tiger does make a huge difference. I can see all my storage (10.98gb) on 10.4.10 on my B&W G3, but only 1.99gb on my iBook G3 running 10.3.9. Too little memory to run tiger ATM.

August 12 2007 at 3:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Chartier

#10: Rolphus, don't worry - in this case, snark about the .Mac iDisk is more than undestandable. :)

To answer your question though: I definitely notice lag on the first time opening my iDisk after a restart/login, whether I sync it or only mount it when needed. After that first opening though, each time I access my iDisk during that particular login session is nice 'n snappy.

I'm no engineer or software developer, but I suspect the lag is because of some sort of issue with caching the list of folders and files in the iDisk; Mac OS X feels like it needs to pull this down upon each initial opening of an iDisk for a login session. This includes the stuff like folders, files, icons, etc., and that might be why it's laggy that first time opening it (for me at least).

If you're having continuously laggy problems, I'm honestly not sure what to tell you. I open my iDisk through the Finder and save files directly to it from browsers, and call files from it all the time (I keep my 1300+ strong repository of blogging images that I use for TUAW, DLS and personal blogs on my iDisk for easy synching between machines).

August 12 2007 at 2:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

tintin77

Is anyone else having problems with the .mac prefrence panel not showing the correct idisk size? I have updated my idisk preferences online/ adjusted the size allocated for mail to idisk but my preference pane still shows 846MB as the total volume.

Also, since the update two of my machines say that they have synced everyday but the changes in calanders and bookmarks don't show up. Is this just me?

August 12 2007 at 1:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Clifford

Rolphus -- are you running 10.4? I found it made a huge difference.

August 12 2007 at 1:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bob Mc

I quit using the syncing feature, because it would lock up my computer when I shut it down.

And I disagree with Steve's comment towards the top -- I like having the entire post when I'm using Google Reader.

August 12 2007 at 12:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rolphus

"after that your iDisk should act almost as snappy as it did when you kept it synching."

I'm actually not trying to be snarky here, but does "almost as snappy" mean "almost as insanely damn slow"?

I've found my iDisk to be incredibly laggy to do anything, whether I'm browsing the synced version, copying files to it, using it online, or using it offline.

Is there anything I can do to help this? I'm generally connected to the internet at 6.5mbit/sec downstream, 448kbit/sec upstream, which seems reasonable enough. I've tried turning syncing on and off, and none of it seems to help.

August 12 2007 at 12:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply