More on "Disk in Use" messages; "Sticky" Swapfiles

More on "Disk in Use" messages We previously sporadic reports, as well as in-house occurences, of unwarranted "Disk In Use" messages in Mac OS X 10.2.x, preventing users from ejecting disks and performing other functions under certain circumstances. Many instances of this problem came when using Iomega removable storage devices. MacFixIt reader Griz offers a potential solution:

"I found away to eject. Select the Zip disk in the finder, hold down command and shift, open the trash, then close it and click on eject. Works every time for me."

Sticking Swapfiles MacFixIt reader Neilwhit reports an intermittent problem where swap files from memory-intensive applications are never deleted under Mac OS X 10.2.1, resulting in a significant loss of hard drive space:

"Ever since going to Mac OS X 10.2.1, I started to notice that throughout the day my hard drive space keeps disappearing. After about 3 days now, I've lost over a gig of space without having added much of anything to the drive. If I restart or even log out, I get it back.

"I let it run again since Sunday evening, putting it to sleep each evening. Ended up with about 400 MB gone. Did the Find and found 6 swap files (swapfile0, swapfile1, etc.) each exactly 76.2 MB = 457.2 MB. Why there are 6 separate swap files, I don't know. I let it run overnight. No change. Swapfiles still there. So this morning I quit all applications. No change. Logged out and back in again. 2 of the 6 swapfiles went away. Only by restarting was I able to get rid of all 6 swapfiles and start over with a single 76.2 MB swapfile0."

Insight on this issue? Drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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