Weird missing disk space

So I've been tooling right along with my macbook for the last 2 weeks and it wasn't until tonight that I start questioning my available hard drive space. I was so used to only have 9gb or so on my Ti powerbook I didn't think about only having 14gb free on the macbook. Then I realized, hey I have a 100gb hard drive now, not a 60gb, and my music isn't even on the macbook. Doing a get info on the 5 folders in Macintosh HD told me I was missing about 45gb of hard drive space. A friend had me use Terminal and look at tmp/vm and there was 24.5gb in sleep and a lesser amount in swap files. I restarted and all but one swapfile disappeared but the sleep file was still there. Another friend suggested doing a du -h -d1. No news there. But then the first friend hit on it and had me do a sudo du -h -d1. There it was, 29gb in trash.
What happened was I used Migration Assistant when I first got this MacBook to transfer files from my powerbook. Sometime during the transfer, one of my lovely cats managed to ull the power cord out of the powerbook, it eventually lost power, went to sleep, and migration assistant failed. Migration Assistant could not be restarted.
I happily, or not so with which ever cat was responsible, just manually moved my files from the powerbook to the macbook. BUT, I had to create a new user name from the one I had used during Migration Assistant. The original user name was on the macbook, but get info showed no files space used! So I didn't worry about it.
Sudo allowed me to see the files that had been placed in the trash under the original user created by Migration Assistant. Logging in as root would have accomplished the same thing but I'm extremely hesitant about ever doing that and really don't think I ever have. Sudo is a different story. Sudo give you about 5 minutes of super power that allowed me to empty the trash via Finder.
This was one of those cases where a casual user would get lost. Disc Utility, etc would not have found this. Just thought I'd put it out here as there are some folks who hang around a lot who are not casual users and may remember this should anyone else have a similar problem.

Try disabling RR. That might work. You might want to enable it again later.
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Message Edited by nonny on 04-19-2008 11:44 AM

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Missing disk space on T400S

My T400S has a ~160GB SSD disk - however, there seems to be ~75GB which are permanently unavailable on C: drive, and do not show up in a directory listing. This is NOT the Lenovo or Service partitions, which take up only ~8GB between them. Moreover the Drive Space manager in the latest ThinkVantage Toolbox reports that it cannot scan these files due to access restrictions. I am logged in as administrator!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

It's probably taken up by System Restore's restore points. These are found in C:\System Volume Information, and is unaccessible even to the Super-Administrator. The only way to get rid of them is using the "Create a Restore Point" page where there is an option to clear all of the restore points. However, CCleaner's System Restore tab allows you to selectively delete restore points as you desire.
It may be a good idea to disable System Restore on an SSD to reduce the amount of unnecessary disk writes to the drive.
Alternatively, the missing disk space may be due to the ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery restore point(s). I'm not exactly sure how these work, but I think they're found in a folder in C:\RRbackup or some variation on the spelling thereof.
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Missing disk space Problem

Hi,
I have recently purchased a T61p from lenovo equipped with a hard drive of capacity 120GB. I have never regretted buying a thinkpad since. Except for the fact that after a couple of weeks I kept losing huge amounts of disk space from my hard drive. I assumed this was due to the downloads I was doing and hence, purchased a WD 500 gig hard drive. I shifted my downloads folder including everything that I ever downloaded to it. I then found out I gained only 20-30GB which was the size of my downloads folder (I never bothered to check it earlier.). Now I was down with missing a whopping amount of 60GB. I dont know if a solution already exists for this as could not find any search results for missing disk space. (For users who are still suffering with the same issue and do not want to read all the trouble I went through, scroll down till you find a void for the solution). As always I sought the almighty google's help. There were a million pages on how vista eats up space for backup and recovery. But after about an hour of surfing over a 100 pages and trying the solutions in vain, I found out that vista takes a max of 15% of disk space. But I lost 60GB then I found out that the trouble was not with vista but with the Thinkvantage R&R utility. I then remembered a prompt form thinkvantage s/w stating that my hard drive was too low on space and that a backup was not possible that appeared not too long ago.
Solution : (Not recommended if you are prone to crashes and always seek R&R's help to regain control over your box) Delete all the backups and disable R&R. Go to Rescue and Recovery program and click the advanced menu button and select delete all backups. Then go to preferences and uncheck the scheduled backup stuff. (Thats how it worked on my T61p. Don't know if the interface is the same on others.)
I always assumed the extra 6gig that thinkpads usually have as the extra partition has all the restoration data. But I guess 6gig is too small for it and the 6gig only has data to restore the PC back to factory condition. Then I found it funny for a program to have been scheduled to make backups of sizes 30GB or perhaps the total used space for a hard drive that is of 120 gigs size. What was even more funnier was that this program was scheduled to run "daily!". I don't know if I set it to that option myself unwittingly or if it was the same by default. I wanted to post here just so others know of this well in advance before they go through all the trouble I did. Please delete this post if this was a known issue. If this has been fixed or sorted out please let me know of that too
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Try disabling RR. That might work. You might want to enable it again later.
Note from Moderator: Please update your profile with your correct country location as per the forum rules. Products, options and services vary from market to market. Knowing your location helps us help you.
Message Edited by nonny on 04-19-2008 11:44 AM

Missing disk space - 'get info' differs from 'du'

Hi there
I have three harddrives in the server - one 80 GB drive for the system (called Server HD) and two 1TB drives for the home directories and network shares.
The problem is that, according to 'get info', the 80GB drive is almost full (only 6 G left) and I don't know where all the space is used.
When I the applications 'disk inventory' or 'whatsize'(in administrator mode) or the terminal with 'sudo du -shx /Volumes/Server\ HD' they all report a disk usage of about 23GB, which is more likely as the system is just a few weeks old and the home directories are not located in this volume.
But if I use 'df' to see the free space this reports the same as 'get info' - only about 6GB left.
According to the system profiler the smart status is verified, so the disk should be ok (I think).
Unfortunately I am pretty new to Macs so I don't have the slightest idea what to do now to check and hopefully reclaim the missing disk space.
Thanks for any tips
Claudia

Look in /Volumes directory there should only be an alias or mount point for any volumes you have mounted. If a volume didn't mount properly, it is possible to find "name" and "name_1" entries, and for actual files to now reside there.
Another utility I like is from OmniGroup
http://www.omnigroup.com/omnidisksweerer which should easily show where space is used.
For books, Missing Manual, and O'Reilly OS X for Unix Geeks
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520625/index.html
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/02/27/1551206.shtml

How to reclaim the missing disk space

i have a t61 with a 250gb HD. when i migrated to window xp the local disk c showed only 120gb and there is no other local disks appeared on the window desktop. can anyone help me how to recover the missing disk space. i am not a computer
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You probably installed from original Windows XP disk [w/o SP2], and original XP support disks only upto 128gb. If you install SP2/3 later on, the support will be added , but the partition woun't magicaly grow by itself If you want to resize it w/o loosing data you have to use 3rd party tools like GParted Live CD [free] or Partition Magic [commercial] software... http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
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Missing Disk Space....How to Fix This?

Hi all,
I've got a 60gb Macbook. I'm using Whatsize to figure out what's been eating my hard disk space, but it still doesn't make sense. I'm the only user on my computer, and my home folder says I've used about 43 gigs with about 12 left. Using Whatsize, it calculates my use to be about 21 gigs, which is what I figured it to be, adding up my music, photos, docs, and apps. But on the sidebar of the Whatsize app, it says that I've used 43 gigs in my home folder. So what is eating up the extra 22-ish gigs on my hard disk that my home folder says I'm supposedly using? I was poking around Whatsize and under Macintosh HD-->Users, I found something weird. I've got 2 accounts under the same name ".USER" and "USER". The one without the period before it contains all of my files and docs and stuff (and 21 gigs, exactly what I've been using), while the other one just says "USER.sparseimage" and the sparseimage is 26 gigs! What is the sparseimage and can I delete it? If anyone can help, I'd appreciate this! Thanks!

Hi,
I had the same problem with FileVault (FV) on my MacBook when I deleted a master copy of a iphoto DVD. The cdr file (ca. 5GB) disappeared but the space was still occupied.
What worked for me was simply turning on USE SECURE VIRTUAL MEMORY in the FV preferences (Preference Panel). FV (Mac OS X 10.4.10) requested a restart and then asked me whether I desired a cleanup of my disc.
Confirm FV's cleanup request and let it restart. You should have that missing disc space back afterwards.
Hope this works for you guys also. If you are interested, www.omnigroup.com has a great program to check where your disc space has gone (Disc Sweeper) and I advise to always get the AppleCare. Have had a few macs and not one worked the way it should.

Finding 'missing' disk space

I have a 2008 MacBook Pro with a 325g hard drive. I want to change the current hard drive for a 240g SSD drive. Unfortunately, I can seem to get the drive down to 200g's. It is running 10.9.1 and all the photos from Lightroom5 and iPhoto have been removed. I have Office 2011 on the drive and that's about it. I can't figure out what is taking up all the disk space.
I have 10.9.1 on a desktop and it runs off a 256g SSD that isn't half full. It has full versions of Lightroom5, Photoshop CC, and Office (although I have several hard drives for image and document storage.
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About “Other”
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Locating Large files
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I expect that there's a huge temporary file hidden somewhere, but still that seems a lot of space.
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Welcome To  Discussions mfidelman!
What were you backing up, and what method were you using?
"...the disk went from 15G of 55G used to 52G used)."
Considering the small amount of free space presently available, I think it could be extremely risky, to download anything at this point.
Insufficient available space, can cause performance issues, system corruption, and possible loss of data.
Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.
Try the procedure below first.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
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sudo periodic weekly
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Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.3.x, authored by Michael Conniff.
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
ali b

Satelite L650/OED - Missing disk space

Hi,
I just bought a Toshiba Satelite L650/OED notebook, and in the specifications, it says the storage is 640 GB, but the only hard drive in my computer after I first initalized it is only 583GB, what is missing?
And I read the user menu, and found that there was a recovery partition which was hidden, so how can I find this partition?
It seems that the default setting for this notebook is that there is only a hard drive C, but no other dirve disk D or E. So how can I protect my files once I need to reformat the C?
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Hi TYQ,
I think the problem is that you always have less disk space as you can find on specifications on HDD. On Wikipedia there is an interesting article about Capcity measurements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Capacity
As you can see, everything is ok with your HDD ;)
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Remove programs and missing disk space

I'm just switched to Mac a few weeks ago and I got problem when I remove program in my MacBook.
Is that ok when I just sent my program to trash and that's all for removing a program? I saw that's some program such as "Adobe Reader" it has a uninstall dmg file but another do not.
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Dragging a file to the Trash does not delete it from the drive until you empty the Trash.
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If an application installs any other files the best way to track them down is to do a Finder search using the application name or the developer name as the search term.
There are also several shareware utilities that can uninstall applications:
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Missing disk space after inserting a USB flash drive

Hello everyone..
I had a little problem with my Aluminum Macbook recently
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I ran the disk utility check and repair it fixed the problem, but then again whenever i plug in any usb flash drive(i tried several), it "steals" my free disk space and i have to run th repair programme again..
Any idea of this problem? is it any kind of virus or something else?
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Hi,
*"a restart message."* If it looks like this...
That is called a kernel panic. Sounds like the USB card software/hardware is incompatible with your Mac.
Go here for help to Resolve Kernel Panics
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Where Does Yosemite Installer Hide? (aka missing disk space)

I've been using a 400GB partition on an external drive for Time Machine backups for some time and it's had plenty of room to work with. I upgraded to Yosemite recently and all was well with the Time Machine backups.
Yesterday I downloaded Yosemite again to install it on a second drive so that I would have a second bootable drive. Today I got notice that there was not enough space on my Time Machine backup drive. Suddenly the 400GB was not enough and my primary boot drive had swollen to 480GB. I don't know what it had been, but obviously there is now a lot more on it than there was.
My assumption is that I have the Yosemite Installer and/or hidden installer files that didn't get cleaned up after the second installation. I can't find anything in hidden files or folders that I recognize as such but soemthing is eating up lots of disk space that I need to free.
Where does the App Store stash downloads in case that's it?
If I hold Option on a restart, I no longer have the Installer as an optional boot disk, but I do get three "Recovery-10"... disks. Possibly those are the problem, but I can't locate them either.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

Ok, I may have found a possible solution. I found this at stack exchange. It's not the best option and it requires a simple shell command, and will not be able to be used to restore from Time Machine, but for backing up one or more directory, at least in the short term, this will work. Here it is:
There seems to be an issue with Yosemite renaming the computer local host by adding (#) after the computer name. There are other reports of this happening in a thread on MacRumors Forum and I believe a few people have blamed this as a cause of time machine backup failures. I've tried a few of the suggestions in the thread but so far none have worked. I've stopped using time machine for now and reverted to an old bash rsync script.
A really simple solution is to open the terminal and type:
rsync -avu ~/ /Volumes/backup_disk/backup_folder
replacing 'backup_disk' with the name of your external hard drive and 'backup_folder' with the name of the backup folder i.e.: 'yosemite_backup'. The three flags -avu mean: archive (a) copy the home directory recursively into sub folders, verbose (v) print to the terminal window everything you are copying (feel free to leave this out) and update (u) will only overwrite files that are newer than the archived file (useful after the initial main backup). This solution isn't as hands off as time machine but at least it's a simple way to back up vital information in Documents and Pictures/Videos.
Hope this helps!
to read the full discussion go to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/151662/os-x-yosemite-time-machine-ident ity-of-the-backup-disk-has-changed

Missing Disk Space After Cancelled Compressor Queue

I am running 3.5.3, with FCP7. Yesterday, cancelled a queue, and deleted the files it created (I messed up the format). However, I have just noticed that I am missing about 40GB on my external drive, and 15GB on my Macintosh HD drive. I suspect that Compressor created somekind of hidden/temp file, because the computer was not used for anything else since this happened. The difference between 'Summary Info' of the entire drive, and 'Get Info' on the drive itself is how I know some kind of hidden file is taking up this space. I cannot find any answer to this problem online.
Does anyone know how to solve this?
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I had a friend that used to work as an Apple Genius take a look. Apparently, Compressor triggered Time Machine to activate a Mobile Backup of my external drive, which created a backup of the compressor files I deleted and then did not delete itself.
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Hope this helps anyone who has a similar issue in the future!

Missing Disk Space, only 1.95gb available

Every mac that I install Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 on takes the primary scratch disk's available space down to 1.95gb, no matter how big the disk is or how much available space it had. This is really irratating since afterward nothing sees more than 1.95gb of available space on that drive until I reformat it. Apple support was going to have me return the drive for RMA until I tried installing Final Cut on another Mac here at the office and it's drive did the same thing. Please tell me someone else has seen this problem cause i've looked through every option in final cut and cannot seem to find any references to this problem that have any leads.
I found one thread here, but no replys.
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Ok... this is an ongoing bug issue (I hate using BUG...) but all the signs point to it.
What is happening is FCP sets aside space when you use capture now so it has a place to write to. FCP is setting aside the ENTIRE drive and then crashing on capture leaving you with the place-holder files.
Delete those.
Now -- the only fix so far is to reinstall your Panther software and only upgrade QT to 7.2 as the highest. You can still find the stand alone installer on the apple site.
"Bug" issues:
PANTHER - OSX3.x
Quicktime - 7.3
Or... upgrade to Tiger and/or Leopard.
Sorry.
(Note... this ISN'T an official response from APPLE... nor should you consider it as official -- only the views of one man (me) as I see the pieces come together on this board)
CaptM

Missing disk space - where is it?

I got a strange problem with my Macbook (late 2007 model).
I have a 80GB harddisk in there, okay let's say 75GB useable. My Finder shows me ~12GB free.
Now when I click on "Macintosh HD" and look at the size of all folders I get the following:
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Users 24.57GB
If I had this up I get to about 40GB. So 75GB minus 40GB is in my books 35GB and not 12GB.
Where is my 20GB of space? Any ideas anybody or has seen similar?
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Use Disk Inventory X or WhatSize to see what is all on your drive. This will show everything including hidden files.
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