So, a month or two ago, I started occasionally getting an error message from iTunes, saying that it was unable to save the library file because the disk was full. This seemed improbable, but when I checked, the C: drive did, indeed, have very little space left. I deleted some stuff, restarted (which freed up a surprising amount of space by itself), and went back to my usual routine. It happened again, and then I did a comprehensive sweep of old install files and upgrade residue and the like, and freed up 1.2 GB.
A couple weeks later, the message was back, in spite of making an effort not to buy new music files, cut down on the picture-taking, and so forth. There’s no way I used more than a gigabyte of disk space in that span, so I went looking for the source of the problem.
And I found it in the iTunes directory: 3129 files named “Temp File 1” through “Temp File 3129.” The files started being created last February, and had an average size of about 20 MB. All together, they were taking up 69 gigabytes of hard drive space.
I deleted them all, with no obvious ill effects on iTunes, and then updated the program (which it had intermittently been pestering me to do, but I hadn’t wanted to spend the time required to download the gigantic update files that Apple produces). It’s been a week now, and no new “Temp File N” files have appeared, so I hope the problem is fixed.
Has anybody seen this sort of thing before? What on earth would’ve triggered that? I’d like to avoid having to repeat this process if at all possible.
(The post title is brought to you by the fact that there’s no faster way to get information about Apple products than to say something nasty about Microsoft…)