HD space gone

Hello guys, I'm new here, first post.
I was wondering if there is a way to check a graph-like image of what is taking space from the hard drive or anything like that(its my first mac). I only have about 12G of files on my 60G HD yet its telling me I have only about 14G free. Just in case it could have anythin to do with it, I should list that I already had problems with this macbook within a month of use and I was told by support that the only thing I could do was re-install the OS, and I did that. I dont know if it could have doubled the files or anything like that, or whatever. Help me out please.
Thanks in advance.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

There are a million ways to find extra space on your drive - many programs, utilities (like Onyx, which is free). There are tricks - like look in the Library/Printers and toss all the huge folders for printers you don't and won't own (literally hundreds of MB's). But your problem is a little weird, that you say Get Info on the drive shows the drive contains more than you think it does. You should start by checking the basics:
- open your drive and make sure at root level that you haven't duplicated stuff, like more than one copy of your user folder.
- you can Get Info on any folder and find out how big it is. If something looks huge, then open it and explore.

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200GB of HD space gone

Macontosh HD has 200GB of space being used for backups. How do I fix this? I would like to free up that space.
Here is a link: Screenshot 1

If your MBP needs the space, it will take space from the snapshots area - you haven't really 'lost' 200GB of space - I would imagine that you recently cleaned out some items that took up some space? TM is just giving you a week to get those files back. When I deleted 178GB+ of music from my startup drive, I had snapshots totalling over 200GB - no worries, in a week it was gone.
However, if you want to regain the space 'immediately' (although there's really no reason to do so) you can disable local backups by going into Terminal (Applications>Utilities) and typing:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
Hit Return and enter your admin password... you'll 'regain' the space.
To turn them on again, use:
sudo tmutil enablelocal
Good luck,
Clinton

New Hard Disk/Space Gone

Hi Everyone,
I just got a new Intel Core Dual and loaded just a few apps and used it all week end and everything was Fantastic. Today however, I went to use it and now all of a sudden almost all my space on my Hard Drive is gone. I am down to 14 gigs. Where did it all go? How do I go about correcting this problem? I tried Disk Utility/Repair but no luck. Please tell me I don't have to reinstall system softwear after only a couple of days use and after getting it all set up. Didn't even have time to do a back up yet.

I don't know much about the 250 since I don't have it. I'd contact Elgato to find out if there are any differences between it and the 200. Their support is very responsive. The EyeTV works really well with my iMac G5 1.8 Ghz and Powerbook G4 1.5 Ghz. Be sure to purchase Toast 6.1.1 or later, as that usually doesn't come with it. It is a very good overall unit, mind you though even though all the encoding is done on the unit, if you attempt to multitask while it encodes, you might get jumpiness on the video recording itself. So I tend to record at night or when I can use another computer. Use the Firewire cable that comes with it, if it is a Firewire based unit, as other Firewire cables may not transmit the signal properly.
It sometimes does confuse Composite video for S-Video and vice versa when selecting S-Video as a single input. I don't know why it does that. However, the Tuner end is the end that works best hooked up to a VCR with a standard coax cable. Converted 150 VHS tapes with it and it works great
Also you might want to partition the hard drive so that one is used exclusively for capturing EyeTV's video. When done with the capture, just erase the partition. Note, partitioning works best if you wipe the hard drive, so learn about backing up according to my FAQ:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

Long problem solvved... now 20GB of HD space gone?

Ok, I haven't posted any part of my long problem yet... so I guess that I'll explain it in full.
2 weeks ago, I prensented a Powerpoint presentation onto a larger monitor. After the presentation, I decided to keep it hooked up to expand my view and get away from the 15" screen for a few days. So I kept it on the larger monitor for another 3days. I tried operating withthe display closed, but when closed the monitor's hertz is hout of range. So I have to keep my semi-closed PB open a millimeter or two to operate. I do not shut down my PB when leaving it for a period of time, I put it to sleep. I have had the AC power hooked in all 3 days. So one day, when waking, the screen on the monitor would not turn on. So i decided that I needed to go somewhere with my PB again so I unhooked it and the LCD screen of the PB would not turn on with the monitor. I tried one of the function keys to toggle screens, and nothing happened. fter a couple minutes, the sleep pulse light turned on again. I tried the external mouse, externam keyboard, trackpad, and keyboard and the PB would not wake. I left it alone for 3 hours, and came back. Nothing. (The AC was in.) called Applecare, told me to reset PMU. So I yanked out the battery and AC, and I finally rebooted. Well now the eyetem clock was set before some date in March 1992 (i forget date) and a message tells me that some .apps may not function with this date. (it was set before 1992, in the '60's.) so I clicked ASystem Prefs in the dock, and after bouncing, it stayed grey as if you are staying held down clicked on it. ( It was also stukck in mid-bouce, up in the air above the dock.) So I tried Safari. Samce result. Spinning ball for long time. HD icon did not mount on desktop, could not open finder windows, could not click Apple>Force Quit, or any other menubar items. Managed to get Spotlight open, and I got Terminal open. (Tried asking apple discussions about a command to backup home folder into connected iPod (Also did not mount) and backup command did not work). Restarted 3 times, same syptoms. Inserted OS X CD,ran short AHT. Nothing wrong. So I had to reinstall the OS. Before this problem, I had 53 Gigs left of my 100GB (93.02-04 formatted) HD. After the reinstall of Tiger, (Can't remember, before reinstalling OS if I was on 10.4.2 or .3) So now, my HD mounted on the desktop (everything is cured) says 33gigs free. 20 gigs gone. So I know that a folder in left entitled "Previous System" in the Mac HD Folder. As nothing in there was needed (i did not lose any data) I deleted the folder. (I only gained back 1GB. So now after carefully checking over almost every folder in my HD compared to everythiong I had before, there is no space-consuming files or folders. Does anyone know where 19GB could have went? Is it a cache, .temp, or anykind of temporary file from the previous system taking up space? I have reinstalled the OS once more before and I did not come accross any kind of HD eating problem like this. Can anyone help me find where 19 gigs could have went? Thanks
-David

Hi David,
Tuttle and others have suggested downloading whatsize to find out where the space has gone.
hth
joeuu

Grid in Spaces gone (dark; no blue rectangles)

Please see attached link to screenshot of my Spaces grid, or to be more precise: lack thereof (grid that is). I have 16 spaces, but the grid has disappeared. The grid appears as is in the screenshot, regardless of how many spaces I use. How do I get the proper grid back? I see no settings to control this, so I figure something is off.
Screenshot: http://cl.ly/2GZ2

Just to illustrate: when doing a slow transition to Spaces (using Shift+F8 to slow down the process), one clearly can clearly see that the grid is present during the transition. But as Spaces completes it's "loading process", it fades to black, eliminating the grid. When reverting, you can also clearly see the grid during the fade out. I'm not sure if it matters, but I have my 32" Samsung hooked up as well. Used to work before doing a clean install of OS X due to unrelated issues.
Proper order for the screenshots is as follows:
1. http://cl.ly/2HPg (Spaces during transition)
2. http://cl.ly/2GZ2 (Spaces fully loaded)
Hopefully someone will pick up on this. Crossing my fingers!
Thanks!

Hard Drive Space Gone

So I was using Disk Utility to "Erase Free Space" on my hard drive like I have done once before. I forgot to turn off the Sleep function of the computer before I left the room and when I came back the computer was asleep and Disk Utility had stopped. When I lookes at the free space on my hard drive it had went from about 39GB of free space to 772KB (The **** thing was almost done) I know that the computer just writes Zeros over all of the free space and the computer is supposed to say that startup disk is almost full, but now that computer thinks that all of the space that the Zeros were written on is actually data that I want to keep on the hard drive. I have tried re-running the Utility and it just Erases the 72 KB of Free Space that it thinks is left.
HELP!!!

Yeah I had that problem for 3 days before I figured it out...
Use WhatSize and meaure your hardrive.
You'll find that there's a file in your trash bin, or in "Caches". whatever file its in, it'll be a huge file, 30+GB...
Delete that, (or if its in your trash, empty it) and you should be fine.

Where has my harddrive space gone?

I will soon be getting a new MacBook with a solid state harddrive. It will likely be smaller than the 500GB drive I use now, so I am calculating what size I need. I can do without some of my own files (under "Users"), but I imagine I need everything else. However, the math just isn't adding up. My folders on the HD are as follows:
apps 12.8 GB
library 12.47 GB
system 4.45 GB
total non-user files = 29.72 GB
My "users" folder is 236.39 GB
grand total = 266.11 GB used.
However, under "info" after ctrl-clicking the HD, it says I am using 406.75 GB! (unused = 58.69, capacity = 465.44.)
What am I missing? Is this missing data hidden but essential and needing to be factored in to my new HD?

Check your hard drive space again using one of the following...
OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $.99 - FreeSpace shows you how much space is available on all local, connected, and network drives with a single click.
Where did my Disk Space go?

Where has my disc space gone? ...is my Mail inbox really 25 GB?

It seemed to me that my disc was a bit full so I deleted a couple of movies and freed up 9 GB. A couple of days later, after doing a bit of word processing, I got a disc full message.
Impossible, I thought.
I did an audit of my space. Visible folders, such as users, system, library etc., accounted for 68 of the 75 GB on the disc.
Question 1: where is the other 8 GB?
Now for the real problem: During this audit I noticed that my IMAP inbox was 25 GB (located at "user:Library:Mail:mailboxes:inbox). I am guessing that this is how the 9 GB got used in two days.
No way do the messages account for 25 GB. My estimate would be 1 GB including attachments.
Any suggestions gratefully received.

HI,
*"It seemed to me that my disc was a bit full so I deleted a couple of movies and freed up 9 GB. A couple of days later, after doing a bit of word processing, I got a disc full message."*
Hopefully this is not a bad sign. Check the hard disk for errors and run the Apple Hardware Test.
Boot from your install disc and check the startup disk for errors.
Insert Install disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
*(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel. It should say: Verified)*
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
When you are finished with DU, from the Menu Bar, select Utilities/Startup Manager.
Select your start up disk and click Restart
While you have the Disk Utility window open, look at the bottom of the window. *Where you see Capacity and Available. Make sure there is always 10% to 15% free disk space*
If the startup disk appears to be ok, run the Apple Hardware Test
Carolyn

Where has the space gone ? I can't find it.

I have a late 2009 iMac 21.5" and recently replaced my HDD with 2tb drive. the new drive shows only 110 gb free space after restoring from Time Machine. The original drive was 1 tb and was only 70% full. All folders total just under 800gb...huh?

What, exactly, did you restore from Time Machine, and how did you do that?

Wheres my space gone?

Hi All,
After a recent problem with jumpy mouse (bought a new one!), I managed to reformat my hard drive, download OSX 10.9 and reload software from backup, but in process seem to have duplicated files which have eaten up my hard disc space.
Hard disc is 319Gb. System software incls. OSX, iTunes, iPhoto, and Adobe CS suite. I have only 5 Gb left.
Is there an easy way of checking what I should have, ( ie list of components ) so I can dump what are likely to be duplicates, like iPhoto which is using 35Gb.
The same image shows in Library and Users, is this just a mirror or duplicate?
Maybe a software prog? Though thats what started my orginal problem (jumpy mouse).
Any advice gratefully received
Reg25x

To understand what Ive done maybe if I explain.
I have an Iomega 1 TB Back up drive which I partitioned so have 2/ 500Gb drives. One for Time Machine and because I didnt entirely trust TM to backup what I wanted, I simply drag copied folders to the other drive. Photos Music etc.
When it came time to restore, TM did not work as I thought, so ended up with incremental restores, so I thought.
Bear in mind I havent touched my Mac since I bought it 6yrs ago and not 'as with it' as to changes in operating system. (I started in 1985, should know better, but grey matter isnt what it was!)
Some of my restore was drag copied and some TM, thats where the dup's come in
The thought of doing it all again and having to re-download software is a chilling thought, so I'll just try dumping the User files. Theyre all copied anyway.
If I have to do it again, at least Im more familiar with what to do than I was first time around! LOL
Thanks so much for your interest
regards Reg

Where has all my iCloud space gone?

Since a few weeks, I have been experiencing issues with iCloud. My free storage space seems to just vanish.
I currently own an iPad 2 and an iPod touch (3rd generation), I used to back up both devices with iCloud, but a few weeks ago, I kept getting a message stating that there was not enough storage space left to back up my devices. Today, I found the time to investigate the matter, and I started with removing both back-ups from iCloud. I figured that would possibly help, but it only made things worse. Right now, I can't backup either of my devices, because iCloud states I have only got about 1MB left for storage. But when I check with iCloud manager for Windows or on either of my devices, I am only using about 50 to 60 MB's. The strangest part is the fact that, when I removed the backups, the storage space I had left grew, but then almost instantly, it started getting less and less, untill now, when iCloud says I only have less than 1MB left!
Can anyone help me on this one?
Thanks in advance
Job
I added two screenshots from my iPad, which show the problem.

Very odd. Both WhatSize and OmniDiskSweeper are often the recommended options for viewing drive contents in exactly this sort of situation, where finding something like an untrimmed log file that has consumed all but a small amount of free space has otherwise proven difficult.
However, since disk utilities did not report any errors, at least we know that the drive is OK. We can also surmise that the issue isn't merely that the Finder is mis-reporting free space since at the outset you remarked that the system had become very sluggish - a common indicator of minimal free space.
I have encountered broadly similar issues before, caused by such things as a file in the trash that could not be emptied but which was not visible when opening the trash to examine it, and File Vault (if you have it turned on, turn it off and try WhatSize again) but clearly you've tried all the common and tried and tested means to identify the specific cause of the lost space - leaving nothing obvious to suggest.
You mentioned that you have an external to which you could copy your data, and it occurs to me that it would be interesting to know if you were to use Carbon Copy Cloner (from versiontracker) to backup your internal drive to the external, how much space the backup would take, since if the sizing utilities can't find the extra data, CCC may also not. If you were to try that, you would end up with a bootable external which at least would allow you to dig around in the data without fear of loosing something important.

WHERE HAS MY HARD DRIVE SPACE GONE?

I am confused!
I regularly run What Size to see what is using up my hard drive and the figures don't make sense. At the bottom of the finder window it states that I have 19.31gb available. What Size also states that I have 19.31gb available but the What Size figures don't add up. The main items are Users 132gb - Library 17.2gb - Applications 14.1gb - System 3.87gb - Usr 1.05gb - Everything else 2gb. As you can see this totals approx 170gb. My drive is 250gb (net capacity 232gb) which suggests I should have 62gb available and not 19.3gb.
Thoughts and help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
David.

Have you thought of invisible files? If you run [this|http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Automator-Actions---Workflows/Show-Hide-Invi sible-Files.shtml] you should be able to see them and add them to your total. If, in fact, you only have 19.3GB left on your disk, you should think bout clearing some stuff off, or investing in a larger drive, 10% free space is the minimum one should have.

Where has disk space gone?

I am running Vista Home premium OS. When I look at the SW Preload C: drive it says that I have 105G capacity and am using 102G. When I look at all of the the visible directoriies, they say I am using about 40G. When I use the DOS command window, I see other directories such as RRBackups and "System Volume Information" which I am not able to view. How do I determine how much space is being used by these directories? How do I view these directories?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I've been driven nuts by wondering where my hard drive on my X60 has been disappearing to! Now - after months of deleting tons of PowerPoint files, video etc to try to make space and having to buy CDs to copy them to - which is hardly efficient (and fearing viruses, Trojans or something worse as being the cause) - I have recovered FIFTY GIGABYTES!!!!!! I am so relieved, but SO B****Y ANGRY!!!!! What kind of an idiot thinks putting utilities on like R&R is a good idea without making it very clear to users what the effect of having it is going to do? It was only after downloading Space Monger software to analyse my hard drive that I found 'protected sections' of the disk and that it referred to RRBackup. A Google lead me to the Lenovo pages and then I found so many other people with the same problems as I had been having!
Don't get me wrong, a back up utility is useful - but for God's sake Lenovo do a better job of telling people that it will use increasingly more of the hard drive to store backups. As it happens, I back up to an external hard drive so don't need the R&R feature, and I am a bit sceptical that a backup on a drive that might fail is useful anyway. But that's by the by....
The inconvenience and hassle this 'feature' has caused me is considerable and I guess it's the same for many other people too. Still, at least I've found it - deleted the backups and now have a hard drive that's usable again!

External disk space gone crazy after upgrade to SL

Hi,
I have just upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, and am now running 10.6.3. I have an iomega 320GB external USB hard disk which I use to back up via Time Machine, and also to periodically back up a virtual machine which is not backed up by Time Machine. Prior to upgrading, there was about 3GB of space on the iomega drive, the TM backups were taking about 251GB and my virtual machine backup was taking the remaining 66GB.
The first time I connected the iomega drive after upgrading to SL, I wanted to deleted the backup copy of the virtual machine (66GB), so I navigated to it in the Finder, right-clicked on the folder and selected "Move to trash", whereupon it duly disappeared. (I thought it slightly odd that I didn't hear the drive making any sound – I thought I should be able to hear it pysically deleting the file.) I then tried to copy a new virtual machine file of smaller size onto the iomega drive, and got an error message that there was not enough disk space. I selected the drive in the L/H pane of the Finder window and hit Cmd-I to get info: this told me the following:
Capacity 319.73GB
Available 1.89GB
Used 317.84GB
I know that the files I just deleted from the iomega were around 66GB, so why isn't there at least 66GB of free space? I have not run Time Machine since upgrading, so there is no way the TM backup set can have somehow expanded to fill up the additional space. I have run Disk Utility and tried repairing the drive, but this has made no difference. I then selected the Time Machine backup set on the iomega drive, which is a folder named "Backups.backupdb", and hit Cmd-I to get info. The get info window popped up and said it was calculating the size of the item. Some six-and-a-half hours later, it finally concluded its calculations and told me that the backup set is... wait for it... 4.54TB! (4,458,364,261,372B to be precise...)
What is going on? I'm aware that SL uses a different basis to measure disk space, but this does not explain where 66GB of freed up space has suddenly "disappeared" to, or why this backup set appears to be 14 times the physical size of the disk it's on!
Am I going to have to erase the drive and lose all my previous TM backups, or is there some other way around this?
Thanks in advance,
Rob

After you selected move to Trash, did you remember to then empty the Trash? When you move something to the Trash the Finder puts it in the invisible Trash folder of the drive in question, and there it stays until the Trash is emptied with the drive mounted.
I have many crackpop theories about things, and one of them is that Apple has somehow messed up the Finder's ability to calculate sizes in the newly rewritten Snow Leopard Finder. Mind you, Finder has not been very good at doing this for a very long time anyway, but it seems to me it has gotten even worse. Nonetheless it should be able to get an answer that makes sense using the GetInfo function for a drive, although it will take longer than it seems to me it ought to do (but in the range of minutes rather than hours). Thus GetInfo on my Time drive shows
Capacity 249.93GB
Available 140.95GB
Used 108.97GB
A result returned remarkably quickly (for a change). Using the disk usuage command in Terminal, where the results returned are shown in the "old" size format rather than the new PR influenced format, shows this:
NoobiX:~ francine$ sudo du -cxhd 1 /Volumes/Time
Password:
1.4M /Volumes/Time/.fseventsd
1.5G /Volumes/Time/.Spotlight-V100
0B /Volumes/Time/.TemporaryItems
0B /Volumes/Time/.Trashes
0B /Volumes/Time/.vol
5.4G /Volumes/Time/Applications
77G /Volumes/Time/Backups.backupdb
7.6M /Volumes/Time/bin
0B /Volumes/Time/cores
0B /Volumes/Time/dev
0B /Volumes/Time/home
7.0G /Volumes/Time/Library
0B /Volumes/Time/net
0B /Volumes/Time/Network
510M /Volumes/Time/private
5.2M /Volumes/Time/sbin
3.8G /Volumes/Time/System
3.8G /Volumes/Time/Users
1.0G /Volumes/Time/usr
4.0K /Volumes/Time/Volumes
100G /Volumes/Time
100G total
Terminal takes a bit of time to return the above results, but again it is in the range of some minutes, not hours. If you DID remember to empty the Trash after moving the files to it, you might try running the du command in Terminal to see where the stuff is.
Copy and paste this into Terminal
sudo du -cxhd 1
press the spacebar, then drag and drop the mounted volume into the Terminal from the Desktop. Press return, enter your admin password (which is not echoed to the screen in any way whatsoever), press return again, and go have a cup of coffee while the sizes are calculated.
Finally, the repair disk function in Disk Utility is not particularly robust. To truly repair a disk with siginificant problems you need something like Disk Warrior.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Where has all my hard drive free space gone

just checking my free space and to my horror my 120 gb hard drive ive used 60 gig what i have no software installed other than microsoft office and roxio how can i free up HD space
yours
Gerard

Hi collin!
A 50GB log file is definitely not normal, a log file is composed of text so to accumulate that sort of HD storage would be considered a "run away" log file. The other thing to consider is that log files are the system's way of documenting things such as error messages and usage parameters. Which log file is it that is 50GB?
Yes, you can delete it and it'll be recreated on restart without any issues. However, you may wish to see what's causing the file to become large. There might be a driver or incompatibility issue on your machine that's causing the log file to "explode." Perhaps make a copy of it and bring it into a Mac Genius for further diagnostics.

HD space gone

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