Massive loss of "Free" disk space after failure of initial back up.

I received the TC yesterday and connected it up according to the manual. At that time I had about 90 gig of free space on the HD (total capacity 150 gig). Midway through the first back up TC stopped and when I tried to open up Time Machine, the Finder blinked and nothing opened. All other apps were OK. After several hours of fruitless piddling around I read the discussion groups and "named" the computer as suggested. Today the TC is working just fine but somewhere I have created a 50 gig file on my HD as I now have 40 gig of free space left. Strange. I checked disk utility and the disk is fine. The total of all my visible files is about 40 gig according to "Get Info". Something is definitely untoward and any suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks,
Geoff

I opened my hard drive and added up all of the sizes of the visible files and folders residing there, from the "get info" data. They add up to about 50 gig. My hard drive shows 100 gig used. Now even taking into account hidden esoteric files and other black arts, that does not seem right.
When I first tried to back up I did not install the air port utility provided, but used the one I had from system 10.5.2 (OK that was dumb but I just figured that would be the latest available and was the same as the one on the supplied CD). Back up started, but failed after about 50 gig had been copied. When I tried to repeat the operation I got the message that only 33 gig was available and back up could not be done. Now it could be just a coincidence but 33 gig is EXACTLY what is left on my internal HD. This all is a bit suspicious. I think it really did try to back up on my internal HD. Since I read the instructions (now there is a novelty) TC worked flawlessly except for the fact that have something large and invisible on my HD.

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How many free disk space after install OS X lion (10.7) ?

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Many Thanks,
Eric

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As you're buing a new MacBook Air, it will come pre-installed with Lion. The actual installation will be somewhat larger than a "clean" Lion install as it will come with iLife preinstalled. Obviously, with an Air's limited storage space, you want to be sure that you have enough room for any applications and data that you'll want to keep on the SSD as well. It is fairly easy to upgrade the SSD on an Air:
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Checking free disk space after setting up Boot Camp?

Hi team,
I've just gone thru the install process for putting Windows 8 on my MB Air. Can anyone point me to info on keeping an eye on free disk space?
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Which internal drive option did you pick? The 3TB Fusion, 1TB Fusion or the standard drive option. It Matters.
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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:
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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.
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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

How much free disk space after setup

I am just about to purchase a macbook and I am trying to find out how much disk space I can expect to have free.
I was thinking of getting the 80gb model but I also have a 40gb ipod which is two thirds full.
How much free space can I expect or should I go for the 120gb HD model?

To give you an indication, my System and Library folders add up to around 12GB and my Applications folder is around 10GB.
While these aren't small they are rather typical as it includes the standard Mac OS X installation, full iLife 06, Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office v.X, Macromedia Studio MX plus a few other things. So you can realistically count on anything from 20 to 30GB for the OS and software. Yes you can obviously get less than that by optimising your installations. From there it's just how much data you have and what sort of data you use.
For most average users 60GB is plenty. If you do anything with video, have a large music library (mine is 10GB) and play games then obviously these will afftect your drive choice.
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Free disk space issue after iOS5

I have an iPad 1 16GB and after I updated to iOS5 the free disc space reduced so that now I have only 3GB free. 10,6GB is shown as "other". Can anybody tell me what this is and how I can increase the free disk space?

It shouldn't be that large unless, for example, you've got lots of videos in third-party video apps (or other third-party apps with large content) - it's usually caused by corrupt files. The only way the I know of reducing the size of 'other' is to restore back to factory defaults, and you could then try restoring to your backup which hopefully won't copy the 'other' back (or you might have to just sync content back and not restore to your backup).

Free disk space significantly smaller after reinstalling

After installing the update for iTunes 8.0.2, I was one of the lucky few who couldn't get their macbooks to boot back up after shutting down after successfully rebooting.
After an apple care phone call and visit to the Genius Bar, all is good again.
But, at the Bar, they reinstalled leopard. I noticed just a little while ago that my free disk space is significantly less than what it was before all of this happened.
Do I need to delete the old install or something (where and how)? He didn't do any archiving as far as I could tell. He just plugged my macbook into the orange thing and reinstalled it.
Message was edited by: heymego

the guy at the genius bar clearly did an archive and install so that your old user data and applications were preserved. that creates a "Previous Systems" folder at the top level of the hard drive which contains your old system. If everything is working ok you should delete that folder and empty trash. once you do the lost space will be reclaimed.

I'm losing 2GB of free disk space every day. How can I prevent this?

Every day this week I notice that I lose about 2GB of free disk space on my MacBook Pro. I'm now down to 20GB. When I started the week, I had over 30GB. I haven't installed any new programs of signficance. I store my large documents (photos, music, movies) on an external hard disk. While the MBP is not giving me problems, performance-wise, I'm concerned about the constant loss of free space.
I checked the size of my sleepimage and swapfile in /private/var/vm and they appear to be normal. The sleepimage size remains constant at 4.29GB and there is only one swapfile that is using 67.1 megs.
I don't seem retain disk space even after clearing the User and System caches, repairing permissions, and restarting my computer.
I checked my recent Console messages and here is a short snippet:
5/13/10 9:49:04 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.514[285] (com.shirtpocket.backuponmount) Throttling respawn: Will start in 9 seconds
5/13/10 9:49:13 AM osascript[3781] Error loading /Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types: dlopen(/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
5/13/10 9:49:13 AM com.shirtpocket.backuponmount[3781] osascript: OpenScripting.framework - scripting addition "/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax" declares no loadable handlers.
5/13/10 10:31:20 AM PreferenceSyncClient[4405] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
I reviewed my Login Items and there doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary there that could be chewing up disk space.
GrowlHelperApp
AdobeResourceSynchronizer
textexpanderd
iTunesHelper
Rogue Amoeba Schedule Helper
VMware Fusion Helper
Dropbox
Lastly, I did a search in Finder using the following criteria and came up empty:
Kind is Any
File visibility = Visible or Invisible
Last modified date is within last 5 days
Size is greater than 10 MB

Yes, I'm running TechTool Pro 5 and it definitely looks like the Data Recovery feature is causing the disk space to be lost. I see lots of recent dates under the Directory Backups list. Looking at the Help guide, I haven't yet found how to turn this feature off.

Update download trouble: App Store says, in error, "-not enough free disk space"

I wonder if anyone can help me troubleshoot this... I am unable to download some updates as from the App Store, and instead get an error message that suggests I don't have enough free disk space despite there being over 100GB free.
More detail: after installing Mavericks successfully, I started updating a few applications. While downloading iMovie and iPhoto there was an error - can't recall what the pop-up said, but I think it was a fairly general kind of error message. When I then tried to download them again, the App Store gave me an error message about free disk space, so I deleted a bunch of files and tried again. Same result, same error message ("Your hard disk does not have enough free space"). I checked on free space, however, and at this point I had over 100GB of free space.
I tried deleting the com.apple.storeagent folder in my Library/Caches folder, then trying again. but it made no difference. I've restarted, repaired permissions, verified the disk, restarted again, and I'm still seeing the error.
One odd feature of this problem: in the App Store purchases tab (see screengrab below), the icons for both iMovie and iPhoto are missing/broken, which might just point the way to what is going wrong.
System details:
IMac 27", 2009
2.8GHz i7
12GB RAM
Running OS X 10.9
Couple of screengrabs to illustrate:

From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Time Machine
If the padlock icon is closed, click it to unlock the settings and authenticate. Turn Time Machine OFF, then turn it backON and close the preference pane. Wait a few minutes, then try the operation again.

Please for referral information, how can I get more disk space, or actually information and guidelines that can have enough free disk space. How, I have to delete documents or downloading to another drive.

Please for referral information, how can I get more disk space, or actually information and guidelines that can have enough free disk space. How, I have to delete documents or downloading to another drive. (The problem is that Safari could not download the file "iTunesSetup.exe" because there is not enough free disk space.Try deleting documents or downloading to another drive) ... Perhaps this is the main problem why can not open iTunes and inscription is: the folder "iTunes" can not be found or created, and is required. The default location for this folder is inside the "Music" folder. - And after options ok, appears option: Choose iTunes Library with inscription iTunes needs a library to continue. You may choose an existing iTunes library or create a new one - but still following options Choose Library and the following options can not open iTunes ... Please for instructions on how to eliminate the problem or eror ...
Mac is running OS X v10.6.8, Safari should be 5.1.10. Or Mac OS X / Version 10.6.8 / Build 10K549 / Serial Number W8****ATM / Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / Memory 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 or More Info:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2,4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1,07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP71.0039.B0B
SMC Version (system): 1.62f7
Serial Number (system): W80394HFATM
Hardware UUID: 94647506-C5D0-5D73-BC7F-FC680D238F43
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
<Personsl Information Edited by Host>

buy an external HD 1TB for $60
NO notebook is a mass storage device, so dont try to turn it into one, it doesnt work that way.
Unless youre using it every couple weeks, its static data and should be on an external HD
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. You should never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your macbook has a HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.

Finder not taking into account local backups when reporting free disk space

Time Machine in Lion (10.7.2) stores local backups of files on your laptop's hard drive when it is not connected to an external Time Machine backup drive. See this article for more information.
If you click on the Apple in the top-left corner of your screen and choose About This Mac > More Info > Storage, you will see exactly how much space your local "Backups" are taking (along with other useful info about how your hard drive space is being used).
Interestingly, the amount of free HD space listed there differes from the amount of free space Finder says is available (when you choose View > Show Status Bar to display it). The amount that it differs is exactly the same as the amount of the local "Backups." So, it appears that Finder is not taking those local Backus into account when it displays free disk space.
So, Finder is telling me I have almost 100 gigs MORE free space than I actually have. I would prefer Finder to show me how much space I have AFTER the local Backups are taken into account.

The article that you linked to gives the rationale for this:
Note: You may notice a difference in available space statistics between Disk Utility, Finder, and Get Info inspectors. This is expected and can be safely ignored. The Finder displays the available space on the disk without accounting for the local snapshots, because local snapshots will surrender their disk space if needed.

Free disk space recommendation

Hi,
I have a question about free disk space recommendation. My system now has <25% free space at ASP3, I can't see any problems until now, but I think that I can some troubles in the future depending on DB growth, it isn't?
Have you any tip about this? Are there any recommendation in IBM i5 redbooks?
Thank you!
Best Regards,
André Honma

Generally you do not want to go much higher than 70 to 80% utilization.
This is because the system may need the free space for system operations, temporary storage and to allow for spikes in storage that may occur when processing heavy workloads, such as temporary work space or for transient files, journal receivers, system logs and spool entries (QSPL as opposed to SAP's own spooling).
Certain systems functions, such as dedicated physical file reorganizations, have specific minimum requirements with respect to the need for free space.
At this point, you are at 75% utilization which puts you right in the middle of the range where you really want to examine what is going on.
Usually when you hit 90% or above you will start to get messages from the OS about high storage.
You can free up space in several ways.   Only keep journal receivers for as long as you need them.   Once they are detached and saved offline (tape/remote jounals etc) they can be deleted.   You need to have a strategy in place for this, however.   Our shop archives a full save on a weekly basis, and all journal receivers up to that point (with a small margin retained for visibility) are deleted.
In addition, we use Datamirror's High Availability product which scrapes the journal receivers to mirror the production system on a hot backup.   The receivers must remain on the system until they are replicated (this is also true for other High Availability products).   This is usually near real-time, but it can be an issue if you do not manage it properly. (Given our weekly archive strategy, this is not an overriding consideration for us, but it may be important for those with a different strategy.)
SAP uses the reuse deleted records feature of DB2, but sometimes excessive amounts of deleted records build up due to spikes, especially in files like VBDATA and related files, or after purging older transaction history or deleting old clients.   You can periodically reorganize physical files to reclaim deleted space.
You can also use RCLSTG (Reclaim storage) and RCLSPLSTG (Reclaim Spool Storage) to reclaim some temporary space.
However, RCLSTG should only be used if there is a specific need for it, as outlined in IBM's technical note: <a href="http://www-912.ibm.com/s_dir/slkbase.NSF/0/9373303619fb4b89862565c2007d4bcf?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=1">Overview of the RCLSTG Command</a>
Periodic IPLs will also reclaim space, including spool space as if RCLSPLSTG had been run..
If you have other libraries on your system, you can also see if they are being managed wisely using the same ideas as you would use for your SAP libraries.
Within SAP itself there are tools to manage tables that are within the scope of you various SIDs and clients.    When SAP purges data, however, it only does a soft delete via DB2 SQL, and a physical file reorg as noted above may be required to reclaim space at the OS level.
As the previous respondent noted, you should keep track of the growth of your system and then take whatever steps are necessary to bring storage down or increase storage.
You may also want to consider your storage strategy.   We had been using full mirroring, and we were able to increase our effective storage by going to RAID-5, and therefore put off the need to buy more disk for a time.
Good luck.
Brian
Message was edited by:
        Brian Sammond

"Not Enough Free Disk Space" error message, but Finder shows plenty of disk space available

Apologies if this is a double post, but I have been searching all over and can't seem to find this issue in the forums.
I have a 256GB Macbook with a fresh copy of Lion installed, am going through the process of migrating files back over, after which I have approximately 125GB free. However, whenever I go online and try to download any type of file (PDF, sofware install files, etc.), an error message displays saying:
Safari could not download the file “blahblahblah.dmg” because there is not enough free disk space.
Not sure how this is possible since the .dmg file is 18MB and Finder is saying there is over 125GB free. I've tried repairing disk permissions, booting off the Lion recovery disk and repairing the startup disk, all to no avail. Anyone had this issue before?

Don Archibald wrote:
Check in Safari's Preferences (in the Safari menu) to see what has been designated as the destination for downloads. If that has somehow been set to a disk image or a CD/DVD location, you'll get that 'not enough space' message.
The same may occur if the download target location is set to a non-available drive. This can happen when aliases are used and things have been copied (migrated) from another drive.
Thanks for the suggestion. That wasn't the problem, but your suggestion did shed light on something else. I was able to perform a right-click action and Save File As... to my Documents folder. On further analysis, it appears that the "Macintosh HD", Downloads folder, and Desktop are showing the "pencil with a line through it" icon in the bottom left of the Finder window, which would suggest those areas are read-only for some reason.
My user account is the only one on the machine and it's an admin account. Any guesses as to why that might have set itself that way, or any suggestions on how to change it? I've already tried repairing permissions on the startup disk in Disk Utility.

Not Enough Free Disk Space to Burn - - Please HELP!!!

Hello -
I'm having a lot of trouble creating my iMovie and DVD. After several days of trying to delete applications and files off of my hard drive, I apparently still do not have enough free disk space to burn the DVD. This is very frustrating for me as I've created several movies/DVDs in the past and haven't had this much trouble. (I have deleted the old movies for more space.)
I have used Monolingual to delete unnecessary language files, and have deleted the iDVD plist as was suggested in other threads, however I still do not have enough free space.
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Thank you so much for your help!

Lindsay,
One of the problem with the Powerbook G4s is that most of them tend to have small - in today's term - hard drives. I have a couple of external Firewire drives from Iomega that I use with my Powerbook to fee as much free space on the internal hard drive as I can. You will have to do the same.
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Exfat drive does not free up space after deleting files

My external exfat formatted drive does not free up space after deleting files using a mac....however if I delete files using a PC, it will free up space.
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Thoughts/Suggestions??

Thanks for the suggestion.
I ran WhatSize and here is the result. Oddly, it says there is 40.2 GB used (in the top-left) which conflicts with the information directly below it: "Capacity 108 GB, Used 103GB, Available 4.27 GB". Not so helpful.
Disk Inventory X solved the problem, however. Much thanks! I wasted most of my weekend troubleshooting this sad issue. Anyway, Disk Inventory X revealed a bug where my external hard drive for photos was still appearing as a mounted volume, even though the HD was no longer connected. Freaky.
After moving it to the trash and deleting it, I've recovered the space.
Again, thanks! Contact me if you're curious about the details, as this might help you diagnose similar problems in the future.
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Massive loss of "Free" disk space after failure of initial back up.

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