Bloated aliases

[irvsil]

My aliases have started showing up as occupying frrom 2 MB to about 5 MB of space on the hard drive, even though the originals are small files, e.g., on the order of 100 Kb.

 

[honestone]

You need to tell us 1) what Mac OS are you running (exact version), and 2) what exact Mac model you are using.

 

[irvsil]

Mavericks 10.9.5; iMac 24-inch, Early 2008, Model Identifier: iMac8,1

 

[honestone]

First, run Disk Utility in Recovery Mode to 1) Verify and Repair Your disk inside the iMac, and 2) Verify and Repair Permissions.

Next, if you did not install the Combo OS 10.9.5 updater, do so. You can get it from here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1760

If that makes no difference, get rid of a couple pf the aliases, and "re-make" them. See what happens with those.

 

[irvsil]

I did all the things that you suggested. Same result as before: the new aliases occupy 5.4MB.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Have a read of Francine Schwieder's post at the following link to see if it explains the size difference:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/10337543#10337543

Also FWIW:

File Alias larger than original file

 

[irvsil]

Here are two screenshots. The problem seems to be growing in size, although not monotonically – notice the dates.