Bizzare usage of space in my user directory

When I look at what I guess is the mac equivalent of my "home directory" /User/[Username] it is 68.10 GB. This seems really excessive compared to what I know/think I put in there. (For example when I right click it and click "Get Info" I get 67,xxx,xxx,xxx).
When I look at all of the indvidual folders I'm not finding anywhere near that much data. When I highlight everything and cntrl right click and click "Get Summary Info" I only have 5.65 GB of space used. (This compares to what I see if I check them individually).
Where is this other 62 GB of data hiding?

OmniDiskSweeper (second item here) is a free utility that will show you every item in (among other things) your home folder, ordered by size.
To show just the contents of your home folder, after launching it, go to the "File" menu & select "Size Home Folder" or type command + shift + H.
Be careful using its delete option -- read the built-in help before deleting anything, & do not delete anything if you do not understand its function. Many files are normally hidden for good reason -- deleting them will often cause problems.

Similar Messages

I have a 2nd gen Mac book air with Lion. The hard disk has filled up even though i keep my data , music etc on hard drive . I used disk inspector to find where problem was and it is 20GB in the hidden files under the user directory can i resolve this ?

I have a 2nd Gen MAc book Air with Lion . The 60GB hard disc has quickly filled up despite me keeping most of my data on a portable hard drive . I used disk inspector to locate the problem but found that it was was in 20 GB of hidden files in my user directory . Is this correct and is there anything i can do about it ? Using disk inspector you can not see individual hudden diretories or files. I did unhide them but there is a mass of diretories etc and so no way i could see if this is one or multiple files using the space. Library System and Applications are at 4 3 and 3 GB respectvely. The data I actually keep on there is 9GB Thanks for any help

I think the problem is Quick Time Player. I am using OS 10.6.8 by the way.
I tried it out again.
I had about 26 GB of space before I played an .avi video.
After the movie started to play (it was slow to load), I got a warning message that my startup disk was full. I opened Disk Utility and it told me I had no space left (about 20 MB or something like that was left).
I watched to the end of the movie.
Then I quit Quicktime Player.
And I shut down the computer.
I turned on the computer and checked Disk Utility. I have about 26 GB of space.
I think for some reason Quicktime Player uses up a lot of the disk space when it runs movies that are problematic. This movie I was watching did not open with vlc.
I normally use vlc to watch movies.
Probably it doesn't use up this much space when the movie is OK.
I think there's a problem with this particular movie. It is about 50 MB so it's not that big a file. I watch .smi subtitles with it. The Quicktime Player automatically loads the subtitle file in this case because the subtitle file has the same name as the movie file.
I watched about 10 movie files from the same series that I downloaded together and did not have any problem watching them. I watched them on vlc. But this latest movie had problems I think (as I repeat). It did not load on vlc even though I waited for a minute, and normally movies load instantly on vlc.
So I think that movie file caused problems. It made QT player use up a lot of hard disk space.
I had better avoid watching that movie in the future. I don't want it to wreck my hard drive.
So to sum up, everything is back to normal. I have the hard disk space that I should have. However, I am scared of damaging my hard drive due to shonky movie files that eat up all the space when they are played using QT player, and so I will not watch those files in the future, as I do not know why the files do that.

Creating files in user directory results in "Operation not permitted" error

Hello everyone,
I have a FileVault-secured home directory on my PowerBook G4 running OS X 10.4.6 which gives me some headache, as you can see from the following Terminal session:
arepty-powerbook:~ arepty$ touch fubar
touch: fubar: Operation not permitted
I am definitely in the correct directory, logged in as the correct user, have enough free disk space and the directory has the correct permissions, as you can see below:
arepty-powerbook:~ arepty$ pwd
/Users/arepty
arepty-powerbook:~ arepty$ whoami
arepty
arepty-powerbook:~ arepty$ id arepty
uid=501(arepty) gid=501(arepty) groups=501(arepty), 81(appserveradm), 79(appserverusr), 80(admin)
arepty-powerbook:~ arepty$ df -h | grep '/Users/arepty'
/dev/disk2s2 74G 64G 11G 86% /Users/arepty
arepty-powerbook:~ arepty$ ls -l /Users/ | grep arepty
drwx------ 180 arepty arepty 6222 May 3 12:31 arepty
Am I missing something here or is my FileVault-directory perhaps fubar? Thanks in advance for any help you guys might be able to give me.
Cheers,
Alex
PowerMac G5 & PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

That is good to know, but it will probably make it ever harder to locate the cause of this problem. In the meantime, I made a backup of my FileVault-enabled user directory on my PowerMac and reinstalled the operating system on my PowerBook. During the backup, I have encountered a couple of I/O errors so I'm guessing either the filesystem was damaged (and could not be completely repaired by Disk Utility, which I have tried) or the hard drive is damaged.
Just to be on the safe side, I have ordered a new hard drive and exchanged it (wouldn't want to risk data loss with the old hard drive) and everything works perfectly again with a completely new user directory.
I am still wondering what caused all this trouble though, since I want to avoid another incident like this in the future.

Move Users Directory

I'm currently running out of hard disk space and would like to keep the existing internal hard drive intact for software. I've purchased an external drive that I plan to have on when the computer powers on. I called Apple support and they didn't have any solutions to move my Users directory to another volume. They told me it wasn't possible. Their solution to my problem was to just add an external drive and just randomly move data to it whenever my main hard disk gets full. This is messy and a very windows-like solution and will make migrating to a new mac painful. Not very happy I paid for Applecare and found better support from Google, but I digress. I came here for real support.
I've found a number of guides, but none were up to date on this topic and were for 10.5 or earlier. I'm currently running 10.6. I know the main steps but wanted to verify the proper flags for ditto.
1. Setup and format new disk, mount it to /Volumes/newdisk
2. copy data (this is where I get a little confused due to different guides.
ditto -V /Users/username /Volumes/newdisk/Users/username
3. In the system preferences, visit accounts, control + click the username and edit the home directory field with /Volumes/newdisk/Users/username
4. logout / login
Does this sound like a sane solution?
According to the ditto manpage the --rsrcFork has been depreciated to --rsrc and is the default behavior, grabbing all meta-data. The -V flag just verboses everything.
Thanks for your help!

What you plan should work, though as Kappy says CCC would be an easier way to do the copy. However, the reason that Apple support recommended against this is that it makes things needlessly complicated. If you have problems down the line and need assistance, it's almost a guarantee that the first thing you'll hear when you describe your setup is "Oh, try moving your user folder back to the boot drive and see if the problem goes away."
Instead, make a plan as to what data you want to store on the external drive and just move that data there. For example, video, audio and photo files are typically large and can be moved to the external drive without moving the entire user folder. This keeps things simple and allows you to potentially move that hard drive to another computer without compromising the integrity of your iMac, among other potential advantages.

Restoring a user directory encrypted with FileVault

The hard drive on my PowerBook (which was running Tiger) was hosed last week. "Luckily", I had been making regular backups of the entire hard drive onto a Firewire drive.
Meanwhile, I've got a spanking new iMac here (running Leopard). I plugged in the backup drive hoping to restore all my precious files, only to discover that everything seems accessible EXCEPT the user directory, which was encrypted with FileVault. In Finder, it looks like an alias that's not pointing to anything.
Now I'm panicking. It looks like everything is there, in that the directory containing the encrypted user directory takes up about as much space as I'd expect it to. I can access everything off the hard drive that's not encrypted. But all the stuff that's actually important to me is inaccessible.
If I can't recover this directory, I'm screwed. But I have no idea where to start. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance (and more later if you help!)

Glad you recovered it!
As I recall, the Filevault encrypted sparseimage is normally kept in /HD/Users/username, but when you are logged into that account the username folder is temporarily renamed .username (with a leading period) so as to made invisible, and a temporary alias called username is created in Users instead.
If so, then it sounds from your description of your files as if you may have been logged into the Filevault account when you made the backup clone. I don't know if you plan to continue to use Filevault in the future, but if so, here is a tip from SuperDuper's documentation:
If you’re using FileVault, your home folder and all its data is stored in a single, large file that’s open and active when you’re logged in. Because of this, you should create a non-FileVault account for use with SuperDuper! Then, log out of your FileVaulted account, into this new account, and run SuperDuper! from there. This ensures that the special FileVault volume is put away and backed up cleanly.
---------

Relocate entire User Directory

Looking for an official statement from Apple on the option of relocating the entire Users directoy in OSX ( lion + )
I'd like to partition the boot drive and relocate the User Directory to the second partition.
( need a method that ensures new accounts are created in the preffered location automaticaly )
Partitioning the boot drive will make it possible to reimage the machine without touching the User's data.
Our image evolves and our user's move between systems - this would save a lot of time and server space.
An alternative to the per user System Preffrences / Users & Groups / ( specific user ) / Advanced options ( choose path )
this method is per user ( involves many steps ) not great for mass deployments.
I have used a symlink ( that works fine as far as I can tell ) perhaps their is another way I am unaware of?
dose the above update the path to a file somwhere in the System ? maybe we can modify that file for all future users..?
or somthing via the "/System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj" ?
Please Advise =)
Thank you!

Thank you Bob, Perfect I have tried the Symlink solution on the entire Users folder - it does seem to be working great. Looking for some official apple support articles - any idea where I could find them without a support contract?
Sorry, but no.
My knowledge of Symlinks comes from being a Unix file system developer for 16 years (several different *nix implementations, but none of them Mac OS X ), plus 2 years Unix file system support, and 7 years network file systems developer (although there were no symlinks in this network protocol ).
I've paid attention to how symlinks seem to behave on Mac OS X, and their difference from Mac OS X Aliases.
While the Finder does use an alias icon for symlinks, the finder seems to use symlinks just fine, and most other applications seem to just ask the file system to navigate the path, and let the file system worry about the details.
But that is my observations. If you insist on official, then you will need to continue your search.

Alias to user directory on remote computer

Hi there,
I was wondering if it is possible to create an alias to a folder in the user directory which can then be ported to another computer and point to the same directory for another user.
I read something about the usage of the symbol '~' to point directly to the user directory.
How can I create an alias that points to '~/Library/Screen Savers/' where the '~' is the 'home/user/'?
Can anybody help me out on this?
Thanks in advance...

Thank you so far. But it's still not quite what I need.
I'll make an example. I made a screensaver that consists of some files. In order to work, all files have to be placed into the /User/Library/Screensavers/ directory. Now, I want to give these files burnt on a cd to a friend that doesn't have much knowledge on macs but runs one. The easiest way for that friend would be, if he would insert the cd, see the finder window with the files and an alias in it. All he would have to do would be to drop the files on that alias and they would be copied to the /User/Library/Screensavers/ directory of his mac.
Much like the aliases that you can find on thirdparty apps that are inside a .dmg file and all you have to do to install them is to drag them onto the applications alias that is also in the .dmg
I read somewhere that the symbol ∼ refers to the default users directory, but I can't figure out how to change an existing alias and insert that symbol.
I hope it is clear now what I'm trying to do. Thanks in advance...

How do I delete a Pages file from the Users directory?

Browsing my new MacBook I've spotted that a version of one of my earliest Pages docs is stored directly in the Users directory. There is no option in Finder to delete it. I can drag a copy elsewhere, but I want to get rid of it completely. How do I achieve this?
Thanks.

Hi Andrew,
You need to go to your Users Library...
users/yourname/library/application support/iwork/pages/templates/my templates
If using Lion... in Finder, hold down the Option key while clicking on the Go menu and your users Library will appear...

Brand new MBP and the user directory is corrupt?

hi, i just installd my new MBP and did a sync of my G5 settings (all except bookmarks) added a few things to my desktop and when i rebooted the desktop was cleared and the home directory was missing "Movies" "Music" "Pictures" in the left most column. all that is left is "Applications" and my user home symbol.
i tried to create a new user and when i did so was given a message that the "home" folder could not be located. weird.
anyway. i also installed a canon IP4300 driver. can anyone tell me what may be going on? do i need to erase the drive and do a fresh install?
UPDATE: i see what happened! the User directory somehow got into the Applications folder! no idea how. but i can't seem to get it out. can anyone help me out?
thx
Message was edited by: Frank Jacob

Open the Applications folder and drag the Users folder inside to the top level of the hard disk; you may need to press the Command key when dragging the item and/or provide an administrator username and password. When done, log out and back in. If only the home folder is present in the Applications folder, move it to the Users folder. Rename existing items as needed.
(25013)

How to Change Default User Directory without changing System Directory

Hi Everyone,
I need to change default User Directory for my JDeveloper 11.1.1.0.2.
Default User Directory = C:/JDeveloper/mywork
Default System Directory = *<JDEV_HOME>/System*
Now I Need to Change it to
My Default User Directory = C:/Monty/JDev11g2/
But System's Default Dir = *<JDEV_HOME>/System*(Same)
For this i explicitly Set variable ide.user.dir to C:/Monty/JDev11g2/ in JDev.boot file as explained in Installation document.
Working fine but it contains System Folder too. I don't want this.
Any Help to find me separate these both as it works for Single User.
Thanks,
Fizzz...

Hi John, You must be right if i'd believe in ghost, A Ghost of System's Folder :-). Well that's true, We should ignore it. But still If someone finds any Clue then let me know.
Thanks
Fizzz...

How to use External Drive for Users Directory

I just did a clean install on my Mac Mini - I have over 4 TB of storage attached, but the main drive (160 GB) keeps filling up. What is the best way to have the Users directory located on an external drive?
Thanks for your help,
Chris

Think about it for a second. What would happen if that external drive wasn't connected for some reason? Maybe it died the night before, as external drives have a habit of doing. How are you going to log into the system?
If the main drive is filling up, it says that you aren't making effective use of the attached storage. There's nothing saying you have to keep video files in the Movies folder, and music in the Music folder, etc. Find some things, that aren't your user profile, and move them to your external storage. Or consider putting in a larger internal drive.
< Edited by Host >

Time Machine does not backup home/user directory (on separate drive)

I recently installed a SSD into my Mini. Due to size restrictions, my home/user directory has to be kept on another drive. I retained the stock 1TB drive that came with the Mini for this.
Ok, installed the SSD, restored a Time Machine backups (sans user data). Used a different admin user and configured my user to use the 1TB drive for it's home directory (/Volumes/1TB/home/<user>). Restart, log in as my user, all is good. All data, settings, etc is there. Everything looks normal.
Time Machine REFUSES to backup this directory. It will backup the 1TB drive and anyting else I create in it, but not the home directory. I tried every permission trick I could think of or found online. I even tested it further by formatting the 1TB drive fresh, adding a new user, configuring the user to use the 1TB for their home directory and it still won't back it up (this was a test of permissions the OS set, to make sure I didn't change my data perms somewhere along the way). Time Machine would not backup the new user's home directory on the 1TB drive.
Any thoughts? I can't be the first person to have their home directory on a non-OS drive.
If I were to create a folder/file in /Volumes/1TB/<test file> ... Time Machine gets it perfect. It just will NOT touch /Volumes/1TB/home/<anything here>
Thanks!

Open the Time Machine preference pane and unlock the settings, if necessary. Click the Options button. If there is one particular folder with items that are not being backed up reliably, add it to the list of excluded items. If there are many such folders, add your home folder to the list, or add a whole volume (i.e., what Apple calls a "disk.") Save the changes.
Start a backup, or wait for one to happen automatically. When it's done, open the preference pane again and remove the exclusion(s) you made earlier. Back up again and see whether there's a change.

Users "redlined" - "Not Found in User Directory"

We've been having this problem off and on all day:
In my User list under Admin page on Contribute, half of the
users have a red slash across their ID and in paranthesis this
message "Not Found in User Directory". The odd things are that 1)
they are in AD and active accounts, 2) using CPS console we can
verify the names and passwords and 3) those using C4 can log in
just fine. Those using C3 and CS3 seem to be having log-in problems
- except that I'm running CS3 and administering site, and I can log
in just fine..
Any ideas?

Have you tried using the Transition Mode (Edit, Adminster
Websites, Compatibility) for all your users, since you are working
with two versions of Contribute?
grtz
Hayo

Need some help with putting a folder in users directory

I'm not sure how to do this, but what I want to do is put this file in C:/My Documents, but I need to be able to verify that C://My Documents exists, if not put it in C:/Program Files.
Can any one help me out?
try {
                    String[] contactArray = parseDatFile(fc.getSelectedFile());
                    Document document = createXMLDocument(contactArray);
                    saveToXMLFile(
                    document,
                    new File(
                    "C:/Program Files/xxx/",// looks for directory for list
                    "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"));
                } catch (Exception exc) {
                    File f = new File("C:/Program Files/xxx/");// setting directory for list if not there
                    boolean yes = true;
                    yes = f.mkdir();// creating directory
                    try {
                        String[] contactArray = parseDatFile(fc.getSelectedFile());
                        Document document = createXMLDocument(contactArray);
                        saveToXMLFile(
                        document,
                        new File(
                        "C:/Program Files/xxx/",// used only if the directory didn't exist
                        "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"));

Need some help with putting a folder in users directoryI recomend using System.getProperty( "user.home" ) not a hard-coded value.
This will use the users home folder ( C:\My Documents ) on Win9X (I guess), C:\Documents and Settings\<current user> on Win2K +, and ~ on Unix-a-likes.

File permissions, inherit for shared user directory

im trying to create a public share where users can read each others files, but not write to them. thats no problem, but im also trying to create a public directory as well, where the users can create a folder inside another users directory.
for example
a new group is created called localnet(name is reflecting a workgroup tied to windows computers), two users (user1 and user2) are assigned part of this group, so that only the group 'localnet' can cross access each others shares inside the /public folder only.
a directory is created to reflect the new group, the two users dirs are added, and also a public dir is added
mkdir /usr/share/localnet
mkdir /usr/share/localnet/user1
mkdir /usr/share/localnet/user2
mkdir /usr/share/localnet/public
now to set the permissions, the users dir is chowned to themselves, and the public dir is chowned to root, all of which are attached to the localnet group
/usr/share/localnet/user1 user1:localnet drwxr-x---- (chmod 750)
/usr/share/localnet/user2 user2:localnet drwxr-x---- (chmod 750)
/usr/share/localnet/public root:localnet drwxrwx---(chmod 770)
all is fine, but when user1 creates a dir in public, say for example /public/pictures it now inherits a different set of permissions outside of the boundaries of this setup, it inherited (drwxr-wr-w user1:users ), this looks familiar, its the way linux adreses users files. So now user 2 tries to place pictures inside to say /public/pictures/roll1 but this user is denied permissions because user1 owns the dir. the permissions i need it to inherit is what i set in the parent, and that is (drwxrwx--- anyuser:localnet)
what im trying to figure out, is what command can i run to allow the sub directories of the /public to inherit its permissions i guess is what im trying to accomplish
EDIT: another though, should i be doing this inside the "home" directory instead? (/home/public) makes more sense to me, would it act any differently there?
Last edited by wolfdogg (2011-12-06 10:35:12)

i ran
chmod -R g+w,g-t,o+t /usr/share/localnet/public
the directory /usr/share/localnet/public/random_by_user1 now reads
drwxrwsr-t user1:localnet
(user2 was able to make a dir inside of this one)
although that worked, and user2 is now able to make a directory inside of a directory that user1 has made, its not inheriting like this. so even though the recursive set them correctly, the new ones are coming up liek this
drwxr-sr-x user1:localnet
(user2 was NOT able to make a dir inside of this one obviously)
without this elevated permission set.
so we have it right when i chmod the files, but how do i get them to inherit this natively? thats a sticky right? how to i make the 'rws' in group sticky, but no delete permission for a non owner? i think thats the question that shoudl have been stated int eh beginning of the post now that im figuring this out.
Edit: (i just realized something, my poor choice for an example might lead you to believe that the users personal directories are inside the /public, they are actually not, so in my examples such as the one above where i reference a new test directory like this " /usr/share/localnet/public/user1" let me rephrase that so as not to confuse " /usr/share/localnet/public/random_by_user1"
the user directories are actually outside of the public eg.. /usr/share/localnet/someuser, where the public shares are inside /usr/share/localnet/public. im sure i made that clear, but at this point, confusion might lead to chaos. lol.
also, i dont want everyone else to have permission, only owner and group, so no need to o+t correct? remember, its only public for the group, not for everyone.
Last edited by wolfdogg (2011-12-06 11:55:02)

Bizzare usage of space in my user directory

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