Disk Utility Shows Incorrect Free Space

I've had this problem for a while now, and I've been unable to figure out why. I can't even remember when it started, but it has become quite a nuisance.
The Finder window shows that I have 302GB of harddrive space remaining, out of 500GB. The Activity Monitor and Disk Utility show I have 240GB space remaining, and my System Profiler shows I have 239GB remaining. I just deleted a bunch of old TV shows off of iTunes (about 40GB worth) to open up some space, but only the Finder changed (up to 302GB from 260GB) but the Activity Monitor, Disk Utility, and System Profiler haven't changed.
Now, I'll assume the Finder is showing the correct amount of space, but I'm wondering why the other utilites are showing the incorrent amount of space. I have a feeling maybe something was screwed up when I created a 50GB Windows 7 partition through Boot Camp a couple months ago.
I've attempted to Repair Disk through the Disk Utility and it says everything looks fine. Any solutions to this minor inconvenience? Or at least an answer as to why this is happening?

The available disk space reported in finder is totally wrong.
Even if it accounts for the local snapshots. In my macbook air it shows 120 Available in finder which is just 1GB less than my SSD capacity.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4467217

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Disk Utility shows incorrect free disk space after erasing hard disk

Hello.
A few days ago, I tried to re-install my Mac OS and both Snow Leopard and Lion got the same problem. Before the re-installation, I erased the hard disk of my MacBook (late 2009) and the SSD of my MacBook Air (late 2010) - but after erasing the disks, the disk utility continued to show more or less 5 GB of used disk capacity, although the disks should have been cleared entirely I think.
After installing Snow Leopard or Lion, Finder showed as much free space as I usually expected it would, but Disk Utility still stated 5-10 GB less. For example:
MacBook: Finder shows 17 GB free, Disk Utility 6 GB free
MacBook Air: Finder shows 26 GB free, Disk Utility 19 GB free
There are 2 problems:
1) I need the original disk capacity. Think everybody agrees with that wish.
2) More important: The MacBook should still get a Bootcamp partition (unfortunately, that's necessary for my university's software.. :s): With 17 GB free space, it would work - but 6 GB doesn't.
I would be very pleased if somebody could help me. I searched the web many times so far but didn't find any real solution.

The available disk space reported in finder is totally wrong.
Even if it accounts for the local snapshots. In my macbook air it shows 120 Available in finder which is just 1GB less than my SSD capacity.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4467217

Does Secure Empty Trash Accomplish the same task as Running disk util to wipe free space

Does using the secure empty trash option accomplish the same task as running disk util to eliminate free space from old deleted files? I'm currently running the 7 pass deal on my late '12 iMac. Says its gonna take 7 hrs. Can I use safari or iTunes while the Big Mac works its magic?

Does using the secure empty trash option accomplish the same task as
running disk util to eliminate free space from old deleted files?
No.
Finder > Empty Trash just tells the file system that those areas on the drive are now available for overwriting with new data. Data deleted off hard drives can be recovered if this method is used before it's overwritten with new data with special software.
Finder > Secure Empty Trash runs a 7x pass military approved overwrite only on the deleted files in the Trash, works for hard drives only.
Disk Utility > Erase Free Space creates a huge file that takes the remaining free space on the volume selected and either writes zeros or 7x pass, then confirms it and then removes the file. Takes a long time to complete, do not interrupt.
This can be used if one forgets to use Secure Empty Trash or wants to scrub caches or other files that don't necessarily go to the Trash for user deletion, such as program files that self delete and download cache files etc.
Only works for hard drives and there is no recovery possible for nearly all users. Those with special expensive magnetic equipment can possibly recover data off a zero pass, but not off a 7x overwrite.
The zero erase free space can be also be used to pre-eliminate potential unknown bad sectors on hard drives before wanted data is written to them, thus preventing future issues with data retention on hard drives.
Disk Utility > Erase - (not moving the slider) will erase all data on the volume or partition selected, including wanted data. It just tells the file system the deleted data is ready for overwriting. Thus can be recovered using special software before it's overwritten on hard drives only.
Disk Utility > Erase w/Security Option - (or moving the slider from the left) will secure erase all data on the volume or partition selected, including wanted data.
It can vary on the operating system version used from zero pass, to 3x overwrite, to 7x overwrite to 35x overwrite (old version for days past of smaller drives, don't use on newer larger drives as it will take weeks to finish.)
Secure erase methods are used to secure erase private data off of hard drives only, doesn't work for SSDs.
For secure data deletion off a SSD or any flash media, it's NSA advised to grind it into a fine powder.
How do I securely delete data from the machine?

Disk Utility Problems - Erase Free Space

Today I decided to use disk utility to "Erase free space " on my MacbookPro. During the process it said it was creating a temporary file!
This took about 2 hours then the application stopped responding, so I clicked skip and ended up doing a force quit!
Unfortunately, this task did not complete but it seems to have added over 10GB to my hard drive.
Any ideas how I can find the file and delete it or should I consider restoring my Mac to yesterday using my Time machine backups.
Thanks
Keith

However, does anyone have any advice on how to use the "Erase Free Space " Utility
This option should only be used when you've insecurely deleted a file you meant to securely delete, and should not be used on a FAT32 drive with 4GB or more free space.
(57218)

My external hard drive accidentally switched off during Disk Utility's "erase free space" process. I restarted the external hard drive and Disk Utility, but now I get the "couldn't mount disk" error when trying to finish the erase. Please help!

My external Lacie Quadra hard drive accidentally switched off in the middle of "erase free space", and when I switched it back on Disk Utility was hanging. So I Force Quit Disk Utility and restarted it. Now when I try to erase I get
"Secure Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk."
But "erase free space" seems to work...
What can I do? I'm erasing as I'm giving the drive to someone else and I wanted to wipe it clean.
Also should I use "erase" or "erase free space" if I want to wipe the drive clean?
Please help!

Sorry I don't really understand.... there are no partitions on the drive. How do I repartition it?
And should I use "erasing free space" or "erase" for wiping clean my drive of everything? Erase seems to be faster last tiem I tried.
Thanks!

Phone Disk Shows Incorrect Free Space

Hi all
I am using Phone Disk on the Mac (makes the iPad/iPhone show up as a hard drive) and its showing the incorrect amount of hard drive capacity and free space. It does this on both mine and my girlfriends iPhone and also on my iPad. For example, I know I have 10gb available on my 64gb iPad but Phone Disk shows me I have only 900mb free out of 1.5gb of hard drive space. I have also installed iPhone Explorer and this also has the same problem. I'm a little confused!
Thanks
Rich

The available disk space reported in finder is totally wrong.
Even if it accounts for the local snapshots. In my macbook air it shows 120 Available in finder which is just 1GB less than my SSD capacity.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4467217

Disk utility shows incorrect size

When I open disk utility on my 2011 macbook air it shows that I have used 181gb with 68 free. But when I right click on my Macintosh HD and select Get info it shows that i have 215gb free and I've only used 34gb. *** is going on. My SSD should be 256 minus overhead/recovery. But these numbers are way off. And yes i have tried to reboot and clear my trash can/cache files.

I figured it out. It was the /.Mobilebackup folder that's taking up all the space. turned off localbackup and it wiped out the directory and cleared up the space. But i'm not sure if this is a good idea. It does give my all my space back in disk utility which is the same result as get info from my hd. These commands helped out a lot
df -H
sudo du -cxhd 1 /

Disk Utility's "Erase Free Space" screwed me over big time. Help Please.

Hey, I have a serious dillema. I free'd up disk space on my mac by transfering files to an external drive, and then used Disk Utility to erase unused disk space to do a thorough cleaning. Now it seems that out of thin air, Disk Utility said my Mac is out of disk space....it basically filled up my hard drive with 370GB's of god knows what.
Here's exactly what I did, step by step:
Basically, I wanted to clean up my hard drive a bit, as I was using about 500GB's out of my 750GB HD (on my MBP 10.6.8)
-Before I did this test, I did a verify + repair disk permissions, I also organized my computer's files... and just to be safe, I booted up from the D key so I could do an extended hardware test to see if everything was running smoothly. I then zapped the PRam. This was my pre-clean maintenence check.
-Then I transferred all of my files onto my external disk.
-After this was done, I dumped the files (that I used to transfer to my External) into the trash bin.
-I emptied the trash bin.
-Now I free'd up hundreds of GB's of space.
-It said that I had 376 GB's of free space in my hard drive. Yay.
Now here where it all went wrong:
-I heard that if you go into Disk Utility, and click on "Erase Free Space" that it goes over all the delted files (that aren't actually permanently deleted) and it permanently deletes them so that it frees up all the loose ends on your mac. I didn't want any ghost files, or any old installs or whatever...so I thought, yes.
Now...Disk Utility was doing this for me....and 2 hours later....it said that I was out of disk space. Disk Utility froze around the 90% completion-mark when it was "Creating Volume" (or something like that) and I had to quit Disk Utility.
Then, I exited....went onto my desk top and checked my Hard Drive.
It said that I had ZERO KB's available.
My hard disk was completely full. How is this even possible? I had 376 GB's of EMPTY space 2 hours earlier.
I tried to go into all of my files to see if there were any duplicates made..I checked terminal to see what went wrong, I checked console...I searched, and I searched...and nothing.
What. The. Heck.
Can someone please, please help me?

Boot from your installation disc, erase the internal drive in Disk Utility, reinstall OS X, copy the files from your backup, and then run Software Update.

Disk Utility shows different available space than Finder?

I just reinstalled Lion from a fresh harddrive. I did not use the migration asistance to pull files over to the new drive, I selested files and dragged them over, So not to fill the drive with things I dont need....
So I "Get info" on the main harddrive it shows
Which is crazy! Then I use Disk Invintory and it shows:
and Disk Untility shows:
Why the difference? Simple question and How do I free up space?
I'm also trying to back up using time capsule*

JimN wrote:
Well, I'm seeing the same thing so before I post yet another note to this group and get no response, I'll at least throw in my .02 cents here as well. Not sure you've found the solution but I've recently started seeing the same thing.
If you use Time Machine, most likely, the difference is your Local Snapshots. Those are kept on the OSX drive on laptops, so you can have access to them when your normal external backups aren't available.
They'll be deleted automatically if your disk gets over 80% full, so aren't shown by the Finder, so you won't worry about the space they take up. Plus, they're "thinned" to one per day after 24 hours, then deleted after a week.
So they really don't cause a problem, other than showing the different amounts.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #30 for the gory details.
If that doesn't fully explain the space problem, see Where did my Disk Space go?
To top this off, what else I'm finding is that there are a number of anomalies I'm encountering that seem mysterious such as Mail no longer functioning correctly, apps crashing, computer restarts randomly.
It all started back in April when my HD crashed and I had to have Apple replace it. Since then, I've gone through 3 "Logic Boards" and even had Apple do further tests but cannot find anything else wrong with it. I'm really struggling with this one!
Sounds like you may have other problems, too.
If Apple has replaced 3 logic boards, but the problem persists, you may want to call AppleCare and ask for Customer Relations. They may not want to transfer you, but insist on it (politely, of course, but firmly). Have all the dates and details handy for them. Ask them to either get it fixed, or replaced.

HT3680 How to get my free space back after quitting the disk utility's erase free space

Hi,
I started the DU's erase free space--fastest way method. When it almost completed, I had a pop up that said that I need to free up disk space.
So then i was flustered enought to just quit the program because I didnt want to free up disk space and I was frustrated.
Not knowing it would still keep whatever it was that took the remaning disk space on my Mac.
How to I get this removed so I am back to before?

Sorry I don't really understand.... there are no partitions on the drive. How do I repartition it?
And should I use "erasing free space" or "erase" for wiping clean my drive of everything? Erase seems to be faster last tiem I tried.
Thanks!

My iPhone 4s in iTunes shows incorrect free space!

Okay, this is very odd... when my iPhone 4S is plugged in, it says that I have way more free space than should be available? What in the world is going on? I wished I had the 64 GB iPhone, but I don't. It seems to incorrectly calculate my free space on my iPhone 4S repeatedly. I am doing a restore of my iPhone right now, hoping that will address the issue. Now I do have iTune Match turned on and am wondering if that has something to do with this? It seems to get confused with what I had on my iPhone and what is in iTune Mactch. I only saw this after doing the iTune Match thingy.

Hey - did you get anywhere with this?
I have the exact same problem and it is definitely related to iTunes Match (I enabled 24 hours ago and the problem started immediately).
In my case the actual phone displays the correct information (about 1.3gb free) but via iTunes (either connecting over wifi or over usb) it displays 19.4 gb free.
In my case the difference is almost exactly the size of my iTunes library.
Here is what I belive is happening (no fix yet).
I have enabled iTunes Match on my phone but I have left the song files on the phone (i.e. I play files actually from the device and not from the cloud) . Now, when I connect to iTunes, iTunes sees merely that iTunes Match is enabled and therefore belives that the phone does not contain any downloaded music (or at least did not contain any at the point iTunes Match was enabled) and therefore displays a library-size chunk as free space.
One fix which I suspect would work would be to delete my entire library from the iPhone, enable itunes Match and redownload the entire library from the phone. That however is not something I want to entertain at present.
This has to be a bug at Apple's end - I hope they fix it soon!

After Yosemite Upgrade my Macbook shows incorrect free space available on Macintosh HD

Hey all .... after doing the Yosemite upgrade on my Mid 2010 15" MacBook Pro it finished but when I double click on the Macintosh HD it shows 140.62 TB available ... kinda impossible since I only have a 500GB drive inside the laptop ...
Methinks I found a bug ... not a huge deal as I know it's likely 140.62 GB free as opposed to TB ... just find it curious ...

Hey - did you get anywhere with this?
I have the exact same problem and it is definitely related to iTunes Match (I enabled 24 hours ago and the problem started immediately).
In my case the actual phone displays the correct information (about 1.3gb free) but via iTunes (either connecting over wifi or over usb) it displays 19.4 gb free.
In my case the difference is almost exactly the size of my iTunes library.
Here is what I belive is happening (no fix yet).
I have enabled iTunes Match on my phone but I have left the song files on the phone (i.e. I play files actually from the device and not from the cloud) . Now, when I connect to iTunes, iTunes sees merely that iTunes Match is enabled and therefore belives that the phone does not contain any downloaded music (or at least did not contain any at the point iTunes Match was enabled) and therefore displays a library-size chunk as free space.
One fix which I suspect would work would be to delete my entire library from the iPhone, enable itunes Match and redownload the entire library from the phone. That however is not something I want to entertain at present.
This has to be a bug at Apple's end - I hope they fix it soon!

Creative Cloud Desktop App Shows Incorrect Free Space Remaining

Hello,
I have a technical issue with my creative cloud account. My CC desktop application (Windows) shows as having 46.7% of the available space used, and at present I have no files stored or in my creative cloud archive. Something is definitely amiss!
Thanks,
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@randyc - Please provide more details. Are you still seeing the "Out of storage" message?
If so we need the log files for desktop sync (CoreSync). The location for each OS are:
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CoreSync/CoreSync-yyyy-mm-dd.log
Windows: %APPDATA%/Adobe/CoreSync/CoreSync-yyyy-mm-dd.log
Note that on Mac OS X to see the user library from the Finder click on the Go menu and hold down the Alt/ Option key. Note that on Windows %APPDATA% is a variable that will change to the correct path depending on if version of Windows being used.

HT1338 My mac Mini shows full hard disk when it is not really full. Shows some free space upon start up that gradually disappears without doing anything with the Mac.

My Mac shows a full hard disk even though the disk is not full. There are several GB of unused space if I add the sizes of all the folders in the disk. Under the disk info window the free space shrinks to zero after a short period of time. It shows more space upon restart, but then it shrinks eventually to zero space available. is there a way to solve this?

OmniDisksweeper can help you find what's hogging your disk space.

I just got a WD My Passport 1TB External Harddrive and i have already backed everything up to it but im still a little nervous about erasing things off the physical drive since it says my disk utility is out of space an implying i need to erase items.

I just got a WD My Passport 1TB External Harddrive and i have already backed everything up to it but im still a little nervous about erasing things off the physical drive on my macbook pro since it says my disk utility is out of space an implying i need to erase items.
I cant find the options to erase selected items it only shows that i can erase everything.
I mean technically i suppose i could erase everything an have a fresh start since its backed up to my external. But what exactly are the specific items being erased?
I have bought the newest OS X 10.8.2 an worried that it will get erased also an end up having to repurchase it.
Can anyone help me?
<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Black_Chevy07 wrote:
I just got a WD My Passport 1TB External Harddrive and i have already backed everything up to it but im still a little nervous about erasing things off the physical drive on my macbook pro since it says my disk utility is out of space an implying i need to erase items.
I cant find the options to erase selected items it only shows that i can erase everything.
I mean technically i suppose i could erase everything an have a fresh start since its backed up to my external. But what exactly are the specific items being erased?
I have bought the newest OS X 10.8.2 an worried that it will get erased also an end up having to repurchase it.
Can anyone help me?
If you are trying to delete some files get out of Disk Utility, it is not for that!
How did you backup and what are you trying to achieve?
Please post the exact error messages(s) you have received.

Disk Utility Shows Incorrect Free Space

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