Knox not giving back free space even after compaction [Resolved: .dropbox.cache was the culprit]

Gabe Knuth

Hey all,



I've been using Knox for a year or two now without issue, but recently I've had issues with free space. Here's the lay of the land:



Single 51GB Knox vault, whose sole purpose in life is to hold my Dropbox (which is the 50GB package from them) that I share with someone else. Just to be clear, my 50GB Dropbox lives inside my 51GB Knox vault, so I'm syncing individual files with DB, not the other way around.



That dropbox fiiled up, and according to both dropbox and Finder, there was only 130MB or so available in that volume. The other person deleted about 15GB worth of files, and Dropbox now sees that I'm only using 75% of the space. Knox, however, doesn't reflect the new free space, even after compacting.



Thoughts? I'm on a 2010-era MBP with Lion, if that helps.



Thanks!

khad

Knox vaults do contain some encryption overhead which takes up some space. Can you tell me what is being reported by Finder for the size of the actual vault and also the space being reported in use inside the vault (once opened)?



[b]VAULT SIZE:[/b]

[img]https://img.skitch.com/20111006-e1p3d7fb1f9kmf6rtfb3y68ktw.png[/img]

[b]SPACE USED INSIDE THE VAULT:[/b]

[b][img]https://img.skitch.com/20111006-grgfsub1ne9t9q9iu9ja75t2f5.png[/img][/b]

Note the difference between the 21.1 MB on disk and the 17.1 MB actually used inside the vault in my example above. The equates to about 4 MB of overhead. This was immediately after compacting the vault. The original space on disk was closer to 40 MB before compacting.

Gabe Knuth

If I Get Info on the volume in Finder, I see Capacity 54.76 GB, Available 569.3 MB. Once inside the vault, I see 569.7 MB.



The volume is sized to allow for some overhead, in that it's slightly bigger than the actual dropbox allowed size. We're not talking about a few mess here and there, though. At this point, we're talking about a difference of several gigs.



I just tried something else though…



In the vault, there is a "Dropbox" folder (and that's it). If I Get Info on that, it says 53.99 GB, which jives well with the Capacity number above. However, if I select all of the items in the Dropbox folder and Ctrl-Right Click Get Summary Info, it says the amount of space taken by all of those items is only 33.07 GB.



So, somewhere there's 20GB of data hiding <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />



Thanks,

Gabe

Gabe Knuth

Considering that, it's probably not a Knox issue, eh? Guess I'll hit up the Dropbox folks! Thanks for your help, and, if you have any other ideas, I'd still love to hear them.

khad

Thanks for updating the thread. It sound like there is some data being stored in Dropbox that is not showing up on your machine in Finder. Does anything show up via the Dropbox web interface? Do you have any folders shared in Dropbox with other Dropbox accounts? There are some interesting disk space calculations when it comes to shared Dropbox folders which may play a role in the strange figure. Though, I doubt that is the case here since there is 20 GB of [i]actual[/i] data in your Dropbox folder which seems to be somehow unaccounted for...



Try simply viewing the entire Dropbox folder and subfolders including hidden files:



[CODE]ls -laR ~/Dropbox > ~/Desktop/Dropbox\ Files.txt[/CODE]

That Terminal command will list all files (even hidden ones) in your Dropbox folder and save the list to a text file called "Dropbox Files" on your Desktop. Maybe something will become obvious when viewing the full listing.



NOTE: You may need to edit the path to your Dropbox folder in that command if it is [i]inside[/i] a Knox vault.



Good luck! If you remember to update this thread once you crack the case, I'd love to know what you end up finding out.



Cheers,

Gabe Knuth

It was the .dropbox.cache, but I couldn't find it before using Finder to show invisible files. The -laR switch helped me find it, and then it was just a matter of rm -r *.* inside the cache folder.



Thanks!

khad

Another case solved. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />



I will file that away for future reference. If we can be further assistance, please let us know. We are always here to help!