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Recovering lost HDD space after Stuffit crash?
Posted by: bigD on 2026-04-13 04:54:14
My Quadra 700 (running 7.5.5) crashed while decompressing a large disk image, and the 1GB that Stuffit Expander set aside was never 'released', if that makes sense. The .img file after the crash was only 30KB. So now my 2GB volume only has 550MB free, and I therefore can't attempt to decompress the original .sit file again. I've looked for large hidden files, rebuilt the desktop, but to no avail. I feel like there's likely an easy solution to this, but my google-fu is letting me down.

Any ideas? My 700 uses a microSD so if all else fails I can rebuild the image with Basilisk and reimage the card, but if there's a quick fix, I'd rather just do that.

TIA!
Posted by: mikes-macs on 2026-04-13 05:48:23
Have you checked inside the system folder? Usually there is an Aladdin folder inside the system folder where temp files go.
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-04-13 06:04:32
Or the trash.
Posted by: bigD on 2026-04-13 07:02:22
Yeah, the Trash is empty and while there is a preferences file for Stuffit Expander, I don't see any evidence of a random temp file. The Finder also shows the System Folder as being 37MB in size. Interestingly, Find File shows a Desktop folder at the root of my volume, but won't open it because it's 'invisible'. I wonder if there's some large temp file in there that's not actually appearing on my desktop? ResEdit will show invisible files (I hunted around this way too), but it doesn't detect any Desktop folder.

Weird. It's not really a big deal - I can zap the microSD and start over. 🙂
Posted by: gsteemso on 2026-04-13 07:07:29
Sounds to me like it crashed in the middle of an HFS operation, such that the space was marked as allocated on the disk but never actually recorded as part of a specific file. A disk-repair utility _should_ sort that out for you.
Posted by: finkmac on 2026-04-13 11:13:49
try disk first aid or diskwarrior. i know diskwarrior 1.x.x supports system 7... but i don't know if it's archived anywhere.
Posted by: bigD on 2026-04-13 11:29:24
I'll give some disk utils a try tonight and see what happens. Thanks guys!
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