I no longer think the problem is me.
I'm an experienced mac user and while i've had occasional bouts of success with limewire, (the position of the moon? random feng shui alignment? i really don't know) it always comes back to the same problem: no matter what preferences i've selected or deselected, cleared my download cache or checked my chi & every other "helpful" hint in the forum or help section, limewire eats through my hard disk space (700 megs or 3 gigs) in about 5 minutes & then can't even save it's own stupid preferences so i have to do a complete reset-up, reselect, reconfigure, every time and for what?
to add 3 new files to my incomplete folder and do it all over again.
i plead with you in the name of sanity. please fix it.

oh yeah: mac 10.3.9. & your last 6 or 7 mac releases. java updates, cleared caches, removed invisibles & found the square root of all imaginary numbers.

what the #$%# is limewire writing to my disk anyway?????

Hi Steve

Although I am not a Mac user I can hopefully give you some pointers.

At this point I would just like to add that I do not know what level of computer experience you have or the size of your HD, that said lets push on.

First of all, you know that LW is a disk intensive program, it is constantly reading, writing and moving data around and it also causes a lot of fragmentation. Fragmentation, in itself, is not a bad thing but it can look as if you are using more disk space than you are actually using.

Secondly, 700MB is about the size of a one-hour film. I have downloaded files of over 1,000MB. Therefore, LW downloading 700MB or so for a file or several files is nothing new. However, downloading 700MB in five minutes sounds somewhat strange (no matter how fast your connection is), if you were a PC user I would say check your system for malware.

Finally, In order to protect your core system, i.e. main HD, and keep a check on what your copy of LW is doing, I would suggest you buy an external HD. They're cheap enough, will keep LW uploads and downloads away from your core apps and data, and will allow you to monitor what is actually going on.

Hope this helps.


UK Bob

Main problem is Mac OSX's java is very inefficient (not as good as Sun's java which all other OS's use.) It has memory leaks, has problems releasing memory, etc. As you may or may not know, all OSX programs including the system itself uses Virtual Memory (VM) to temporarily store memory. So for that reason, you need as much space as possible on your system drive. 700 MB or 3 GB is simply not enough.

I moved my iTunes library to an external drive. I moved most of my programs to other internal drives/partition. So that freed up many GB's for my system drive. You can see how much VM programs use by going to Utilities folder, opening Activity Monitor. That will show much much VM & ram & cpu power each one is consuming.

BTW the last version of LW that works on OSX 10.3.9 is LW 4.12.15, as the later versions require Java 1.5 which OSX 10.3 doesn't have.

BBTW I liked the way you worded your post. I was in chuckles over it. Very cute.

Thank you ukbobboy01: sorry i was unclear. I meant it eats 700mb or 3 gigs downloading nothing. just doing, well i don't know what its doing, storing up memory like a frantic squirrel storing nuts in the fall. If I was downloading 700mgs in 5 minutes I would not be complaining (whining). I think Lord of the Rings really enlightened me...

Thank you Lord of the Rings: I guess I did not fathom it needed sooo much memory. I will make the appropriate adjustments & see if I can get all 3 of those incomplete files. Hipeeeee. Glad you enjoyed the post.

Thank you both for taking the time!:

Hello Steve,
3 gigs is nothing these days. If you're running things that close it's time to buy more space. If you're into movies etc. consider buying an external 300 gig drive. And then defrag defrag defrag! Set it up so the PC defrags when you're not on it. LW Pro for some reason really needs a clean drive. I did this and all my problems disapeared. I hope it helps you.

PS: I never let my drives go lower than 40 gigs.

Good hunting, Mitch

Okay, a few notes:

First off - we're running Mac OS X. Though Malware isn't an impossibility, it is still legitimate to say it is highly unlikely that that is the problem.

Secondly, I've had this problem myself, and it started with one particular Limewire update, though the specific one escapes me at the time. 300MB files may not be irregular, but I'm sure we know if we're downloading a 4MB music file or a 300MB porn mpeg. I've found it so frustrating to work and work at clearing hard drive space, getting myself up to 700MB or so (I have a 10GB drive), rebooting so everything was clean, and then getting maybe 2-3 music files before I start getting disk space notices from the OS. A few 4MB files are suddenly eating up 700MB?

Yes, Java has issues, and virtual memory can be a pain. That's why I upped my memory to about 640MB (running 10.3.9). The issues didn't change from when I had 384MB. Considering the pains I have taken, I sincerely doubt virtual memory is (exclusively) the issue.

One thing I have noticed is that the problem seems to increase by leaps and bounds for each new search I do.
<explanation>
I'm not an attorney, but I get the impression if I own the cassette version of an album, I should be within rights to obtain that album, or it's songs, in MP3 format to use on my iPod. Having only a 15GB iPod, I shuffle songs through it occasionally (and having a 10GB hard drive, I do NOT sync), so months after deleting something from the iPod, I may have a desire to listen to it again, and go searching for it.
</explanation>
So anyway, I find I have a lot less of a problem if I get on, do ONE search, download some songs, and be done. If I do several searches (such as trying to nail down a single track), the issue intensifies. If I've done 5-7 searches, I'm lucky to get 3-4 files before I have to quit (and restart, because just quitting doesn't return all of the used memory).

I have since progressed some - I'm on a G4 iBook with a much larger hard drive, Mac OS 10.4 and it's newer Java, and an 80GB iPod, so though I will probably be using Limewire to reobtain my tapes and some CDs that are in storage, I haven't gotten to the point of using Limewire under my new configuration. Perhaps this is fixed under 10.4, or the newer Java, or the newer Limewire. I don't know, but at the very least, I can commiserate with you. I have shared your pain.

I do have to ask, though, at this point in the OS's evolution, just how much drive space would you (LotR) suggest leaving open for virtual memory? I now have a 55GB hard drive and about 2GB free. I've always heard the rule was 10%?

Stevie - if you really want to clear your hard drive, I would suggest a tool like OnyX that can help you find, or automatically clear, many if not all of your logs, caches, backups, archives, and lots of other miscellanious data that's great if a) your computer does something truly unexpected and b) you know what it all means. I've opened over 500MB just having it trash logs.

One last note - disk defragmentation is also not truly an option. I think there are many 2-3 disk degragmentation tools out there for Mac OS X? At this point, I've been told the disks' drivers handle defragmentation and an external utility is unnecessary (and somewhat dangerous with the constant disk use from the operation of the OS).

I think Java 1.5 which is available only to OSX 10.4 & 5 have improved performance a little.

Defragmenting was necessary/helpful under OS9 & earlier, but OSX system drive at least doesn't require it AFAIK also.

I moved many of my applications & now install most of my applications where possible to other drives to save space on the system drive. AFAIK that's the only drive VM is used by OSX. The longer LW is open & the more heavily it is used such as for searches, the more the VM builds up. I haven't been running my LW for days on end like I used to due to other needs of the computer/internet now. So I am not sure about the newest versions (4.14) handling over a week with VM. I think from memory the beta (4.13) did still suffer somewhat but I didn't measure (which is unlike me).

For LW alone, I'd recommend at least 3 GB to be solely for LW. Keeping in mind OSX & every other program requires VM, & the less space there is on the system drive, the slower it tends to get. So basically, as much as possible free space on the OSX system drive. Stief would be a good one to ask about this.

For LW 4.14+ you can also go to LW's prefs > Advanced > Performance & disable all the options on that page. That will at least give some energy back to LW, though not sure whether or how much it affects VM.

Other things to help reduce VM:
Set both uplds & downlds to autoclear.
Close all LW windows you don't need open at that time. eg: Connections window.
If you're not in front of your comp, then hide LW in the dock.
Don't use the Resume button on all incomplete files. This can have side-fx. May queue your files for much much longer. This will also stress LW & your comp. If you use Resume/Find sources then just apply it to a couple or so at one time. Better tool is Searching again using original terms, & also Control-clicking the search tab & using Find more results.

Other things that can add to VM are many incompletes or many shares. If small files, I'd suggest keeping them under 2,000 shared. For large files, perhaps under 1,000 or 500 for videos. (I'm keen to try things out on a new desktop but that won't be for a couple of months at least. )
For incompletes, occasionally this helps: Tip: Purge the Downloads Queue! (click on blue link)