Lost HDD space after reinstall of OS X

I recently purchased a Mac Mini (Mid 2011) used. The previous owner failed to restore to factory settings. Being a good neighbor, I looked for a way to restore and rid the Mac of their info. I pressed the (command + R) shortcut and then it had a world on screen. It checked the hard drive and components, I assume from reading, then went to a small menu. I read that I would use disc utility and erase option. I did. Set the correct formatting. Then I go back to the small menu. I didn't have wifi connected so next it prompted me to connect. When I clicked off the menu, it disappeared. I could not see it again nor could I see wifi option. I read it was at the top right so I click, click, click, and viola wifi option. Obvious at this point the screen is not all showing. I'm on a Sony Bravia 32". Now with wifi connected, I began searching for where the menu may have hidden. No luck. I was forced to shut off and try again. (Command + R) again. Small menu is back after the world pops up and checks everything again. I click install Lion and it checks with Apple and asks what HDD. I originally had 500.11 GB. I checked it via the guest account prior to my trying this. It may have also been seen during the process mentioned. Then it gives an HDD with only 499.87 GB. I think OK maybe it's an updated larger version of Lion. So I proceed. Half way through a 7 hour stint, my wifi signal gets knocked out. It prompts to reconnect and then start again. The problem after that is the status bar is all blue and no download time left anymore which one would think its indicating its finished. I knew better than that so I left it for what I think was still maybe downloading. Another 7 hours later. It is still running. I make the decision to abort and try again. This time taking same steps, but with a 12' Ethernet cable. No more disconnects. Now it goes through same process then for hard drive selection it says 498.22 GB. So obviously with no other choice, I select it. Now for the questions.
1. What happened to HDD space?
2. Can it be recovered? If so, please do tell! Without $100 in additional software.
3. Did I seemingly succeed in removing previous owners info?
4. Why does downloading via Ethernet have the same speed as wifi?
5. When I complete reinstall can I register this product with Apple?
6. Will making a USB drive allow the same small menu and options for restoration of the Mac?

First off, you should run the Safari 4 beta uninstaller that came with Safari 4.
Secondly, if Safari 3.2.1 doesn't work, it probably is because some network application you previously installed hasn't been tested with it. Did you install any cell phone or PDA syncing software recently? The Hotsync typically is a plugin for cell phone or PDA syncing software.

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Lost Disk space after Reinstalling Leopard

I upgraded my Mac OS v.10.4.9 to Leopard v.10.5.1 in May and after Leopard was installed I had about 13 GB HD space left. It was lightning quick too. The new OS was v.10.5.1
Since then I've been downloading regular Security updates as they were prompted until the OS reached v.10.5.5 but the whole thing was gradually getting slower too so I figured I would reinstall Leopard and take it back to v.10.5.1 to see if it was back to the high speed it had when I originally installed Leopard v.10.5.1.
After I re-installed Leopard last week and it was back to v.10.5.1 it went back to running superfast again, but yesterday I started getting a notice that said I was running low on Startup disk space and I needed to delete some stuff to gain space.
When I checked available space I have less than 1 GB, about 300MB.
It seems that by re-installing Leopard it has been written adjacent to the 10.5.5 instead of on top of it, which I thought it would do automatically.
I found a file named 'Previous systems' on the HD and deleted that but it screwed it up so I had to restore that and now it's back to normal but I've still got less than 1 GB disk space.
Can anyone tell me how to delete my old operating systems (both the 10.5.5 and the 10.4.9 that I presume is still on there, which I originally upgraded to Leopard.)
I'm a conservative user of disk space and I deleted all my photos and only gained about 20 MB of new space so I'm pretty sure the problem is the OS's are written adjacent to each other instead of on top of each other.

Barry,
Thank you for your help.
When I deleted the Previous Systems file it was about 7 months after the Leopard installation.
You are right, I did do an Archive and Install in order to maintain all my info from v10.4.9.
The problem I encountered after I deleted the Previous Systems file was I then did a Secure Empty Trash and as it was emptying it was showing over 200,000 items and still upticking and that worried me that I had done the wrong thing by deleting the Previous Systems file.
So I stopped the Emptying process, and did a restart, thinking my HD space may be restored if the file was indeed possible to be deleted.
When it restarted that time, instead of the usual boot up process, there was a small flashing square box in the centre of a grey background, the small box had a blue earth in it and that went on flashing for maybe 20 minutes.
It eventually booted up and so I went to the trash, where the now presumably slightly diminished Previous Systems file was, and I dragged that file back into the HD and re-started the machine.
The world sign again flashed on, but this time for maybe only 10 minutes before it booted OK.
I checked and I was back to v.10.5.1 bit still with only about 300MB Disk space.
That's when I deleted all my photos but that only gave me about 20MB so now I'm up to about 320 MB - but as you say that is nowhere near enough.
But I do notice a definite increase in speed using 10.5.1 compared to 10.5.5. Those Security Updates have dragged it down badly.
Now that you have explained that the Previous Systems file may be safely deleted then I will try that again and let it run its course this time.
I'll let you know what happens.
Thanks again,
ann

Lost all my HDD space after cancelling partition!

Short Story...Ive lost all my HDD space after cancelling partition, i had 1TB now i only have 13gb
Long story...I installed parraeles desktop 8, went to install windows 7, it said i only had 60gb free, went to disk utility to try and partition to 150gb but only allowed me to partition 50:50 for unknown reason, i began the partition and then cancelled it as i wanted to try and only allow 150gb for windows 7, now it does not show partition at all, and says i only have 13gb free!!!
PLEASE HELP ASAP!!!!!!
Running OXs 10.8.2

Do you have a Time Machine backup of your system, if not make one. Then go back into disk utility and delete the partition you just made. To install Windows 7 via Parallels Desktop 8 you don't need to partition your hard drive the program takes care of the entire install.

How to reclaim hdd space after compacting VHD in hyper-v

I have a virtual machine installed on Windows Server 2008 using Hyper-V. The VM is using Windows 7 as its OS. I had originally set the size of the dynamic disk to 40 GB but soon learned that wasn't large enough and expanded it to 110 GB.
Now I an no longer running the VM and need to reclaim some of that space while keeping the VM intact. I have run the compacting wizard, and it says the disk is now 24 GB with a maximum size of 110 GB.   Yet all of that space is still allocated
for the VM's use. How do I reclaim the empty space?
I have tried to go into the VM and shrink the current volume, but it says I don't have enough space to do so.
I appreciate any suggesions as I really need to reclaim some of that hdd space.
Thanks!

Hi InScribeKBriggs,
>> I have run the compacting wizard, and it says the disk is now 24 GB with a maximum size of 110 GB.
Please ensure that you are using correct wizard , only "Inspect disk..." will show the information
“the disk is now 24 GB with a maximum size of 110 GB” .
Please use "Edit disk..." , before you do this I would suggest you to execute
disk defrag in  windows7 VM first then shutdown it then execute "compact" in "edit disk..." wizard.
Byt the way , it is a dynamic disk and the current size is 24GB means
the size on physical disk is 24GB , maximum size means it can grow up to 110GB this can not be decrease .
Also please refer to following link to compact the dynamic VHD :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708394(v=WS.10).aspx
Best Regards,
Elton Ji
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Lost disk space after each reinstall.

I've had to reinstall leopard on my macbook three times in the last week for different reasons. After each reinstall(erase and install) it appeared that I lost a little more GB to the HDD. I have a 250GB HDD, and I know it actualls reads as 232.87, but without uploading any media and only using the reinstall disks that came with the box, I have only 218 or so GB. Is this normal? I can't find the numbers anywhere; they just don't add up.

Anthony Turtzo wrote:
I can't find the numbers anywhere; they just don't add up.
My guess is that you have added up the sizes of the folders visible in Finder at the root level of the drive (Applications, Library, System, & Users) & compared that total to the total space used on the drive. The two numbers will not match because there are also hidden files & folders at the root level of the drive that Finder does not normally show. The hidden items are necessary for the proper operation of the Mac & in normal use are managed by the system. Since users should not tamper with them directly without good reason & it requires expert knowledge to do so without breaking anything, they have been made invisible in the Finder view.
It is normal for the drive space used by these items to fluctuate, & for the total to grow somewhat after first installing the OS. Some of the items contain temporary files that are created & destroyed as needed. Some contain usage, crash, & other informational logs that are managed by routines that the system automatically runs periodically to keep their total from becoming too large. Others contain initialization data gathered over time that the system uses to start up or to run processes efficiently.
Thus, there is no fixed correct number for their total size since that depends on the history & current state of the machine. On my iMac G5, one large hidden folder ("var") currently uses about 1.05 GB of drive space, but consider that only a ballpark number since it may be considerably different on different Macs at different times.
If you are still concerned about the health of the drive, especially that something is eating up disk space unnecessarily, then run Disk Utility to check it. In the "First Aid" tab select your drive & click the "Verify Disk" button. If this reports no problems then you can be pretty sure there is nothing to worry about.

HELP! I LOST many apps after reinstalled the 10.2.1 OS

My phone is Z10, and the previous carrier is O2. (now I already unlocked it). Yesterday, I post an message about my phone 's problem, today I did , but after I reinstalled the 10.2.1 OS. Something happened. Please take a look and help me .
1. The starting windows image is changed (not China unicom or ).\ feels a little bit slower than before,
2. I lost many apps, the voice control、twitter、 youtube、music etc. Now my phone only have one page of apps( should be three page of apps). And the monitor doesn't have reaction when I tapped it.
3.when I recover my back-up, I found out only those apps from BBW or original apps recovered, the others not.
So what should I do now? I have tried twice to reinstall OS.

Based on the screenshot you didn't follow my instructions in the other thread and reinstall the OS using BB Link. You installed a developer version of the OS that you downloaded from somewhere that is incomplete. Please do the following if you're not using Link to install the OS officially:
1. Connect your device to your PC and make a full backup with BB Link (if you don't already have a backup.)
2. Download the correct autoloader for your device from the first post in the thread linked below. You need to know your full model number (i.e. STL100-1 (or -2, -3, -4) which can be found in Settings >About. Make sure you download the one for your model that contains the radio file. There is another crackberry thread that contains a newer radio file that you can load once you're all done if you want to have the latest and greatest. The process for loading a radio file is the same as this process but no need for backup/restore.
10.2.1.1925 OS: http://forums.crackberry.com/bb10-leaked-beta-os-f395/lengend-presents-10-2-1-1925-all-q-z-887047/
10.2.1.1926 Radio: http://forums.crackberry.com/bb10-leaked-beta-os-f395/1926-radio-q10-5-z10-1-2-3-4-z30-891107/?highl... (load this the same way after the OS above has been loaded.)
You will need to unzip the downloaded file from above before you can run it. If you don't have an unzipping application on your computer you can download 7Zip from here: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html
Close BB Link and leave the device connected.
Double click on the autoloader you downloaded.
The process should take around 5 minutes or so. when it's done, you'll need to complete the startup process before you can connect to Link and restore data.
When you're done you can restore your backup, though I recommend NOT restoring your Settings backup as it's best to start clean with this new OS but it's up to you. You may experience small bugs here and there from restoring the Settings portion of the backup. Media and Application data seem to be OK to restore.
This will install the correct version that has all the apps you're missing.
1. Please thank those who help you by clicking the "Like" button at the bottom of the post that helped you.
2. If your issue has been solved, please resolve it by marking the post "Solution?" which solved it for you!

Mysterious usage of my external HDD space after last backup on TM?

Recently, after some problems with TM giving me a pop up error, I turned off TM and used my WD MyBook as a normal external and have just been copying files onto it. Last night, I figured it has been a bit too long since I last backed-up my mac's HD (I backed up right before I upgraded to ML in the beginning of August). It took well over an hour for it to just prepare the backup, then took almost all night to backup 100GB worth of data (I downloaded a few games and I purchased a few TV series). Before the backup, i checked the "Get Info" option of my external and saw that it said I had about 600GB of my 1TB left for space, but then when I started the backup, it went down to 70GB left!!! My internal HDD is only 250GB, so I dont see how 600GB could be used up just like that... with all the files (pictures, videos, shows, and games) that I manually put into my external HDD, i use up only about 300-400GB. Even if I used up ALL of the space on my internal and backed up everything, it still doesnt add up to the 900GB that have been mysteriously used up. Any clue where all of this data was used up? should i delete my old backups from older versions of my mac's OS and just make the most recent back-up what I have on my mac now? Any help would be appreciated!! I feel as if TM did something wrong when i backed up my data after 2 months

By going into the options you gave me, it said that the size of the backup should still be 211GB, which still doesnt make up for the good 300 GB discrepancy. Could it be that it is making multiple copies of my internal due to the fact that i updated my OS?

Time Machine needs "work space" after reinstall of Snow Leopard

Hey all,
I had to completely nuke my hard drive and reinstall Snow Leopard after my hard drive got corrupted and my MacBook wouldn't boot up. I restored my system from my Time Machine backup, and after installing all updates, everything on the system seems all hunkey-dorey.
Except for Time Machine. Whenever TM tries to do a backup, it tells me that it needs 250GB of storage for a backup - as if it's completely ignoring all my old backups. I'd prefer not to wipe my external drive, so if there's a way to get TM to work again without a wipe, I'd love to hear it, but I suppose if I have to, I have to.
One more thing, according to the Time Machine Buddy widget, TM detects that it has a migration, but the UUID doesn't match. Here's the full log.
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb
Detected system migration from: /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-08-30-220159/Macintosh HD
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Starting pre-backup thinning: 253.69 GB requested (including padding), 64.14 GB available
Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2010-04-20-180830
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-04-20-180830: 64.87 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-08-30-181632: 64.88 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-08-30-171626: 65.03 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-08-30-170427: 65.04 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-08-30-160235: 65.19 GB now available
Removed all 5 expired backups, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-04-27-174822: 71.78 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-05-04-171714: 75.79 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-05-11-094053: 77.26 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-05-18-165214: 81.98 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-05-26-173141: 82.82 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-06-02-214217: 106.60 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-06-09-100848: 114.84 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-06-16-115343: 120.15 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-07-29-112106: 123.57 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/Brian Charous's MacBook Pro/2010-08-02-104709: 123.71 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backup

You reinstalled OS X which causes TM to backup the drive from scratch. This is normal.
See User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Disk Utility lost disk space after cancelling partition resizing

Hi,
I accidentally cancelled the process of creating new partition (by shrinking old).
Now I have 50 GB of disk space lost.
How can I fix it?
Thanks.

Yeah, I found the solution of the space problem caused by same reason here:
Disk Utility quit. Missing HD space!
Nothing happened. So probably will have to reinstall it.

Lost my music after reinstalling windows

Hi all.
So the problem i got was that i decided to reinstall my windows by making a fresh reinstallation and so i made sure that i backed everything up even my itunes library onto a flash drive.
After the reinstallation, i put it all back into my computer as well as the music by selecting it and dragging straight into itunes. I then erased it from my flash drive thinking i had nothing to worry about. Today i tried to play music and my itunes tells me that it cannot locate the songs, which is 100% bs because i personally saw to it that it all got into the library, but now it seems that i have lost my whole library of music since i deleted it all.
At this point i am dissapointed and angry at itunes for this inconveinence that they have put unto me.
In my opinion, itunes has come a long way, but now that i just lost all that i had, i have lost all interest with itunes.

Did you confirm that you have checked Sync Music on the Music tab of your iTunes sync settings?

Lost disk space after formatting drive

Hi folks,
about 2 months ago I bought an 320GB IDE drive for my win machine. Recently I decided to put it in an old FW case to use it for TimeMachine. The external case always did an excellent job so far. When mounting the drive, I could see it was 320GB. I reformatted the space to OS X journaled and now it is showing up as being 128GB. Reformatting with GUID or MBR, just to check if that could be the problem didn't bring me the lost space back.
Any ideas?

Mailman42 wrote:
Some external cases have a size limitation on them. The chipsets inside.
nerowolfe replied:
I thought that was only with Winders FAT32 stuff.
If that is the case, it may be possible to partition the drive into 2 pieces, each below the max.
I believe that in some cases (pun intended!) the limitation is that the older chipset does not have enough bits allocated in its silicon to address the greater capacity of larger drives. If so, partitioning or the file system installed won't matter -- it still won't be able to access any part of the drive at the higher addresses.
In this respect, it is much like the 32 bit address limit of FAT32, except it is in hardware instead of in the file system specification.

Lost disk space after Avast anti-virus scan

I used the free Avast anti-virus software to scan my MacBook Air running Mavericks and after the scan about 30 GB of disk space seems to have vanished according to software like Freespace but not according to the Finder's "Get Info" function. Where is it? How can I get it back?

In anticipation that most of the responses here would be to uninstall Avast, I did that and it did not solve the problem.
So I ask again: Does anyone have a solution that is actually a solution.
I am not interested in yet another lecture on how Macs don't have viruses etc etc. Whether or not they do now, there is no real reason they can't should some teenager in Russia take on the challenge of writing such viruses. Also, I use Parallels to run some essential Windows applications and I'm sure I will pick up viruses that way. I have the Windows version of Avast installed in the virtual machine and so far no problems with it--and that I'm keeping unless someone has a better idea for free Windows anti-viral software.
I am a long-time Mac user and I've heard it all, so spare me. Just advise if you have a specific solution to the problem I've got.

Lost HDD space

Hi,
I was using Azureus bittorrent when I lost a couple of gigs of harddrive space. The files to be downloaded were to be put straight across to an external usb drive I have.
This hasn't been a problem before but it just went crazy today and all this space vanished...
Any tips? I'm finding it quite hard to work out where this can have gone.
going to try posting this in the ibook section as well.
Thanks

this was really useful
however
as it turns out the files to be copied had been hidden in a hidden folder called Volumes. setting finder to show all and then removing this cleared it up
thanks
fred

Lost free space after an "Erase Free Space" procedure

I just ran the "Erase Free Space" application from the Dick Utility. The erase failed and now I have ZERO free space available. I am now showing that all 111g or used oposed to roughly 50% prior to the Erase Free Space. I have found a few articles trying to explain what to do but, I have been unable to locate the empty temp files that we created during the Erase Free Space, so I have been told. Can anyone help me resolve this solution and restore my free space?
Thank you,
Shannon

WhatSize should be able to find the temporary files
<http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/>
You could try the Erase Free Space from Disk Utility on the install DVD. It might delete the files when it finishes.

Lost HardDrive Space After Deleting Bootcamp Partiton

Hello, Everyone
I have a small issue i open finder window and it says that i have 398.18GB Available but when i go into Disk Utility and go to the top result which is called WDC WD6400AAKS-40H2B0 Media it says that my Total Capacity is 640.14 GB so i go to the Partition Tab and it says the following Available Space: 533.58 and the HD Size 639.66 so i go to my Desktop and Get Info on my Macintosh HD and it says my Capacity is 493.79GB and i don't understand where the rest of my space has gone the Macintosh HD says that i have only used 95.61 GB on disk so if you can help me get my rest of my space back it would be much appreciated.
I have tried repairing it in disk utility but it hasn't worked
Thanks, Sean

HI,
Try repairing disk permissions...
Quit any open applications/programs. Launch Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities) Select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select the FirstAid tab. Click: Repair Disk Permissions. When it's finished from the Menu Bar, Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac. If you see a long list of "messages" in the permissions window, it's ok. That can be ignored. As long as you see, "Permissions Repair Complete" when it's finished... you're done. Quit Disk Utility and *restart your Mac*.
Carolyn

Lost HDD space after reinstall of OS X

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