Problems with storage after failure of restore from TM back up.

Question

Okay, so I've become so frustrated over this that I've decided to see what is the issue. After a horrible incident where I inadvertedly removed the OS start up disk (I unsuccessfully installed Windows 8 without the proper drivers...long story really), etc I was forced to restore my hard drive back to stock through the Genius bar. They recommended that I restore my files with using "Users" from Time Machine because I had backed up everything. Unfortunately, the two times I've tried to restore from backup, it would always stop at 52% (I had about ~250gb to restore) so I just stopped trying and if I needed any files, I would manually transfer them. Anyway, my issue is that I just recently noticed (a month after trying to restore) that I have about ~200gb in my "other" category. In theory, that shouldn't be the case because there is barely anything on my computer. Barely. I've looked at so many websites and so far, no idea... Any ideas? Should I just wipe my hard drive clean again?...because this is getting ridiculous. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so.
To locate large files, you can use Spotlight. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click the line of text below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.