Home Forums Hardware Mac Desktops & Notebooks The Incredible Shrinking Memory

This time I am not referring to my personal grey matter:)
My 400 Ti 867 GB 768 MB laptop has suddenly - I think - developed the capability to "gush" 490 MB in 2 minutes (from 500MB down to less than 10MB) when I was trying to save a disc image in Popcorn. Not quite so amazing was its trick of leaking 100MB in 3 minutes (from 524MB down to 424MB) whilst watching a movie in DVD Player( 3 minutes of the video_TS file I was trying to save).
I have also noticed - in Activity Monitor - that the amount of free memory continues to be lost and not completely refreshed after quitting applications e.g. Mail, Safari.
I have also also noticed in Activity Monitor the appearance of Google Software Update and sometimes GrowlHelperApp. I have updated Google Earth recently which might account for the former, but I have no idea from whence the GrowlHelperApp has come and I have a vague notion that I have read somewhere that Growl can cause some problems. I have been unable to find anything to substantiate this, quite the contrary actually:(
I guess you might realise by now that I would obviously be grateful for any advice/suggestions/information that might help to solve this problem.
I have just remembered that I also updated Spotify and Max, both of which have "tickets" in the Growl folder - not that I really understand what this means.
Also, I think I should point out the general slowness of the computer - loads of spinning beachballs and "application not responding"s. Having said this, however, it does seem to have speeded up a little the longer the computer has been active, but watching DVD player again is still gobbling up the memory.Thanks in advance. Regards. Mike

Addressing your points in order and as best I can:

• I suspect that Popcorn uses quite a bit of RAM when it's doing its thing.
• I wonder whether DVD Player is using RAM for buffer space?
• When you quit an app you do not regain all the memory it was using; this (from our very knowledgeable Mod, joemikeb) will help you understand what actually happens.
• Growl 1.2.1 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker (Edit: I'd have to guess that something you installed or updated brought Growl with it.)

And what, if any, Mac maintenance do you do, and how often.

Hope this helps some.

That part, at least, is normal. Video disc images are HUGE. If you're saving a disc image of a movie DVD uncompressed, it can be as large as 9 gigabytes.

artie505, tacit
Thanks for your replies, the contents of which I appreciate and, surpringly for me, do understand. By the way I have joemikeb's explanation bookmarked.
What I don't understand, is why this "phenomena" has suddenly started as I can remember in the past when I have bought a DVD I wanted to back up I didn't experience the "treacle" effect I did yesterday - I did in fact give up trying to save the image after about 3 hours when it was only about a quarter of the way through. Again, if I remember correctly this action would normally have taken about 15 minutes.
Referring back to joemikeb's "piece", all the free memory is gobbled up by inactive memory - I don't know if this is significant. Obviously I would appreciate any further comments you, or anyone else, may have, as this "occurrence" is certainly nothing I have experienced before and I assume that after a few minutes (2 in the case of using Pocorn, about 20 in the case of watching in DVD Player) the processes are using the hard drive (virtual memory), which, although I appreciate would be slower than Ram, really is diabolically slow.
Thanks again. Regards. Mike
I have just noticed that for some unknown reason I referred to my laptop as 867GB - this obviously should have been 867MHZ

You didn't answer my question about Mac maintenance.

How often do you restart your machine to clear swap files?

Do you run any maintenance routines such as Yasu to clear caches, log, etc?

I don't know whether either will be helpful if you don't do them already, but both are worth a try now and ought to be done on a regular basis in the future.

Hi artie
Sorry, I meant to address this when I edited my post.
I run Onyx "Automation" each time I back up, which is usually about once a month.





Sorry, again, for delay I was just checking what "Automation" covered and I notice "Clear Cache" (Applications, Internet, Font and System and Kernel) are not checked. Perhaps I should amend this. Just one point though, which I am sure I have asked somebody somewhere before, and that is ..... won't clearing caches defeat the object of having them in the first place? Also, or perhaps its clearing cookies, but don't you lose information you have stored for a specific reason e.g. usernames etc.
Thanks again for your reply and look forward to any further input/s.
Regards. Mike

Clearing caches is generally considered a troubleshooting, not maintenance, technique, but many, myself included, treat it as the latter, because caches do become corrupted, and (in my view, anyhow) clearing them periodically is kinda like changing your oil before your engine seizes up.

Yeah... You do lose some stored info, some of which, notably that in Safari's cache, will cost you more or less time after the deed's been done, but I'm not aware of any real monkey wrenches that clearing caches throws into the works.

Your "information you have stored for a specific reason e.g. usernames etc." is not, to the best of my knowledge, stored in caches, rather it's stored in either Safari > Prefs > AutoFill or in cookies.

Thanks artie.
I will amend my Onyx tasks ie include clearing caches, and see how it goes.
Thanks again. Regards. Mike

PMFJI but just to add some background to Arties comment on clearing caches, etc. Artie's assessment of a corrupted cache file sounds as if it could be right on target and like Artie, I have never heard of any ill effects from flushing the various cache files other than initial loading of some apps may be a bit slower launching because of the need to rebuild and re-populate a new cache file(s).

Historically in OS X 10.0 through roughly 10.4 many of us, myself included, religiously ran Cocktail or Onyx to repair permissions, rotate the log files, rebuild the Launch Services database, and flush the cache files on a weekly, if not more often basis. However, improvements included in Leopard and Snow Leopard have rendered some of this if not altogether obsolete at least less necessary. Many FineTunedMac readers and contributors still religiously adhere to the weekly, or more often, cleanup schedules, but more and more users are relegating these cleanup tasks an as needed basis. In other words if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In your case however, it is "broke" so it is time to fix it.

Thanks for those words of wisdom.
I'm about "to fix it".
Regards. Mike

I don't wish to tempt fate, but my initial reaction to having had a "clear out" seems to be positive inasmuch as at least Mail and Safari seem to be more "responsive" and more friendly, when open, with other apps.
Thanks all. Regards. Mike

That's good news, but what about your troublesome apps?

Don't bring me back down to earth yet.
As I said, "my initial reaction" is but I've not yet delved into the
If you hear no more you will know ALL is well. In fact, when I do get around to and ALL is well (or otherwise ) I will more than likely let you know anyway.
Regards. Mike

Quite a reaction... Sorry for having asked.

Sorry I made you sorry.
It was meant to be an amusing response.
I'll leave out the smilies this time in case I chose the wrong ones.
Thanks as usual, and sorry again. Regards. Mike

Yeah... It was the smiley that threw me. (I'd have used a )

No sweat.

Hope all works out for you.

Thanks for the response.
"Things" do seem better and even the Inactive Memory seems more inclined to "give some back" than it had been, but there's still a couple of issues I haven't got around to double checking yet.
Thanks again. Regards. Mike

I guess I have spent too many years as a technical instructor and/or university lecturer but this statement leads me to believe you have a misunderstanding of how memory is managed in OS X. That in turn may be leading you, and/or others, to erroneous conclusions. This may seem nit picking, but hopefully it will help avoid future misunderstandings on your part or that of other FineTunedMac users...

1. In OS X all memory is "virtual". That virtual address space may be allocated or mapped to
   • physical RAM
   • any application, font, or data file on the hard drive
   • a swap file on the hard drive
   • or left allocated but un-mapped in cases where it has been requested by a task but as yet the task has not attempted to use it
2. There are four "state's that RAM may be assigned to:
   1. Free - not currently in use and available for immediate use by any task that needs it. When a task need more physical RAM this will be the first used.
   2. Wired - RAM allocated to that portion of the OS that must be in RAM memory at all times. This is not available for allocation to any user task.
   3. Active - currently mapped to and being used by a task
   4. Inactive - currently mapped to an active task but not recently accessed by that task. RAM allocation to another task will come out of the inactive memory only if there is no free RAM available. If this RAM is allocated to another task and it currently contains data the content will be rolled out to a swap file. The theory being that although the owning task may not be currently using the RAM it may in the future and it speeds things up if the data does not have to be rolled back in from the hard drive.
3. All memory allocation is under the absolute control of OS X.
4. OS X allocates memory only when requested by an active task
5. When memory is allocated to a task, OS X's memory manager will make the decision to map the memory allocation to physical RAM, a swap file on the hard disk, or another file on the hard disk using a complex algorithm that considers the needs of the task itself, the status of other tasks active in the system, and the current status of the physical RAM.
6. OS X only reassigns ("gives back") Inactive RAM when more RAM is needed by another task and there is no free RAM available.

Although this is a bit out of date you can find my more graphic explanation of the OS X memory model here.

Yes, you're spot on, I obviously do "have a misunderstanding of how memory is managed in OS X"
On a positive note, I think/hope it is improving with each time I read your link- which as I have said, I have stored as a bookmark - as, I seem to see "something else".
I think I am wearing out that link and Activity Monitor over the past few days.
Dare I ask another potentially misunderstanding? Yes, I'm sure you wont mind.
Having monitored Activity Monitor so intensely lately, am I right in assuming that many people who leave there computers on semi -permanently (personally, I shut down after each session) may well be "running" on very little Free memory. I am basing this on the fact that if I run, for example, Safari, Mail, iTunes etc during a session - particularly if I quit and re-start the apps, within a couple of hours, depending on which app I am using most (Safari seems to be the main culprit) my Free memory may be below 10 MB. Some times all seems to run fine/ish, whilst on other occasions I may experience the "treacle" affect.
I do hope you understand what I am trying to say, but to sum up, if I didn't shut down as often as I do, wouldn't my Free memory remain very low inasmuchas, in my case anyway, that Inactive appears to be a "selfish hog".
I think I'd better quit while the going's bad, but I do hope I haven't confused you too much and you my be able to enlighten me some more - a thankless task at best.
Thanks again. Regards. Mike
PS As I have been espewing all this potential garbage, I have noticed that my Free memory has not diminished as rapidly as it had been when I opened this topic a few days ago, hopefully a positive result of the cache clearing I recently did. Make sense??? Oh yes, and a small matter of a "successful" Disk Repair by Disk Utility - minor Volume Bit Map repair, Invalid volume free block count.
In any case, perhaps you can still try to address the aforementioned queries.