Hidden files chewing up space

[tomsem]

I thought this might be of interest.

Recently I suffered the 'trauma' of running out of space on my Paperwhite, after finally getting around to trying to download everything in my library that I hadn't yet read. True, I have a number of image-heavy ebooks (technical books with lots of screenshots or photos). But things still didn't quite add up. Even after deleting one of my 50MB+ ebooks, the free space didn't increase nearly as much as it should have.

I almost never hook it up to the computer do anything, but I thought I'd take a look and see what was going on.

First off, there were a few screenshots in the root folder. But these took up very little space.

Then I looked in the documents folder.

Of the 'visible' files, there were a number of 'orphaned' .sdr folders. Normally, each document has a corresponding .sdr folder, which contains all of the 'sidecar' files (for annotations, page numbers, xray etc.). These should be deleted when the associated item is removed or deleted, but for some reason, this doesn't always happen. While they don't generally take up much space (a few KB), I deleted them anyway.

Then there were a bunch of 'hidden' files with these names (this is on a Mac using Finder, which I've tweaked so as to show hidden files):

.fuse_hidden*
.goutputstream-*

The '.fuse_hidden' files were relatively small, about 1MB each, and had modified dates ranging back to last November, about 2 per month. But the '.goutputstream' files added up to over 200MB, and were created back in January. These seem to be 'junk', temporary files left around when my Kindle crashed for some reason. Delete.

Finally, note that when you 'delete' stuff with Finder, it just moves things to a hidden folder on the Kindle 'drive'. You have to 'empty the trash' to complete the delete.

I started with only about 25MB free, after the cleanup this went to about 400MB free. I was able to finish downloading the rest of my 'unread' books and I still have over 300MB free.

Anyway, it was quite a worthwhile exercise, and one which I'll do a little more often in the future. You may want to do the same.

[krazy4katz]

Thank you! That is good to know. k4k

[VictoriaCole]

Just write this in the terminal:-
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE and hold option while hold left click on the finder icon, it should say "relaunch finder" or after the command type KillAll Finder.... it worked for me and I have been trying to hide them the old way which was defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO but it didnt worked. If this does not work for you. You must try few online apps that may show hidden files.

[sirmaru]

Just RESET your Kindle and ALL added files will be permanently deleted. Then start over again.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Just RESET you Kindle and ALL added files will be permanently deleted. Then start over again.

I concur. Resetting the Kindle and then reloading all books and collections from the cloud is indeed a lot faster than looking up and deleting the temporary trash files.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I concur. Resetting the Kindle and then reloading all books and collections from the cloud is indeed a lot faster than looking up and deleting the temporary trash files.

Not for me, I just run $HOME/bin/kindlesync which uses rsync to backup all my books and deletes .goutput* and .fuse* in the process.

Or you can just search them and delete in bulk. Which is still a lot faster than waiting for your ereader to download tons of books. Or using calibre which is almost as fast but still doesn't restore your current page, or your notes.

[Katsunami]

[Barbara1955]

And a Lot safer! I figured I just mess it up wore delete the Wrong files LOL