Missing disk space - 'get info' differs from 'du'

Hi there
I have three harddrives in the server - one 80 GB drive for the system (called Server HD) and two 1TB drives for the home directories and network shares.
The problem is that, according to 'get info', the 80GB drive is almost full (only 6 G left) and I don't know where all the space is used.
When I the applications 'disk inventory' or 'whatsize'(in administrator mode) or the terminal with 'sudo du -shx /Volumes/Server\ HD' they all report a disk usage of about 23GB, which is more likely as the system is just a few weeks old and the home directories are not located in this volume.
But if I use 'df' to see the free space this reports the same as 'get info' - only about 6GB left.
According to the system profiler the smart status is verified, so the disk should be ok (I think).
Unfortunately I am pretty new to Macs so I don't have the slightest idea what to do now to check and hopefully reclaim the missing disk space.
Thanks for any tips
Claudia

Look in /Volumes directory there should only be an alias or mount point for any volumes you have mounted. If a volume didn't mount properly, it is possible to find "name" and "name_1" entries, and for actual files to now reside there.
Another utility I like is from OmniGroup
http://www.omnigroup.com/omnidisksweerer which should easily show where space is used.
For books, Missing Manual, and O'Reilly OS X for Unix Geeks
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520625/index.html
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/02/27/1551206.shtml

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Missing disk space Problem

Hi,
I have recently purchased a T61p from lenovo equipped with a hard drive of capacity 120GB. I have never regretted buying a thinkpad since. Except for the fact that after a couple of weeks I kept losing huge amounts of disk space from my hard drive. I assumed this was due to the downloads I was doing and hence, purchased a WD 500 gig hard drive. I shifted my downloads folder including everything that I ever downloaded to it. I then found out I gained only 20-30GB which was the size of my downloads folder (I never bothered to check it earlier.). Now I was down with missing a whopping amount of 60GB. I dont know if a solution already exists for this as could not find any search results for missing disk space. (For users who are still suffering with the same issue and do not want to read all the trouble I went through, scroll down till you find a void for the solution). As always I sought the almighty google's help. There were a million pages on how vista eats up space for backup and recovery. But after about an hour of surfing over a 100 pages and trying the solutions in vain, I found out that vista takes a max of 15% of disk space. But I lost 60GB then I found out that the trouble was not with vista but with the Thinkvantage R&R utility. I then remembered a prompt form thinkvantage s/w stating that my hard drive was too low on space and that a backup was not possible that appeared not too long ago.
Solution : (Not recommended if you are prone to crashes and always seek R&R's help to regain control over your box) Delete all the backups and disable R&R. Go to Rescue and Recovery program and click the advanced menu button and select delete all backups. Then go to preferences and uncheck the scheduled backup stuff. (Thats how it worked on my T61p. Don't know if the interface is the same on others.)
I always assumed the extra 6gig that thinkpads usually have as the extra partition has all the restoration data. But I guess 6gig is too small for it and the 6gig only has data to restore the PC back to factory condition. Then I found it funny for a program to have been scheduled to make backups of sizes 30GB or perhaps the total used space for a hard drive that is of 120 gigs size. What was even more funnier was that this program was scheduled to run "daily!". I don't know if I set it to that option myself unwittingly or if it was the same by default. I wanted to post here just so others know of this well in advance before they go through all the trouble I did. Please delete this post if this was a known issue. If this has been fixed or sorted out please let me know of that too
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Try disabling RR. That might work. You might want to enable it again later.
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Message Edited by nonny on 04-19-2008 11:44 AM

How to reclaim the missing disk space

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You probably installed from original Windows XP disk [w/o SP2], and original XP support disks only upto 128gb. If you install SP2/3 later on, the support will be added , but the partition woun't magicaly grow by itself If you want to resize it w/o loosing data you have to use 3rd party tools like GParted Live CD [free] or Partition Magic [commercial] software... http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
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Is your computer saving a panic.log after each of the kernel panics? You can see by opening Console (in /Applications/Utilities) and looking for it. I'm not at my Mac now, so I can't tell you under what section to look for that log.
When you try to boot from the CD, are you holding down the 'C' key as the computer reboots? You can also try rebooting with the Option key pressed, which will present you with a list of bootable volumes. It will also give you access to the Apple Hardware Test (if this is the DVD that came with the computer). If you can select the Apple Hardware Test, I'd recommend doing the Extended Test, which will test the hardware, including the RAM.
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So I've been tooling right along with my macbook for the last 2 weeks and it wasn't until tonight that I start questioning my available hard drive space. I was so used to only have 9gb or so on my Ti powerbook I didn't think about only having 14gb free on the macbook. Then I realized, hey I have a 100gb hard drive now, not a 60gb, and my music isn't even on the macbook. Doing a get info on the 5 folders in Macintosh HD told me I was missing about 45gb of hard drive space. A friend had me use Terminal and look at tmp/vm and there was 24.5gb in sleep and a lesser amount in swap files. I restarted and all but one swapfile disappeared but the sleep file was still there. Another friend suggested doing a du -h -d1. No news there. But then the first friend hit on it and had me do a sudo du -h -d1. There it was, 29gb in trash.
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This was one of those cases where a casual user would get lost. Disc Utility, etc would not have found this. Just thought I'd put it out here as there are some folks who hang around a lot who are not casual users and may remember this should anyone else have a similar problem.

Try disabling RR. That might work. You might want to enable it again later.
Note from Moderator: Please update your profile with your correct country location as per the forum rules. Products, options and services vary from market to market. Knowing your location helps us help you.
Message Edited by nonny on 04-19-2008 11:44 AM

Finding 'missing' disk space

I have a 2008 MacBook Pro with a 325g hard drive. I want to change the current hard drive for a 240g SSD drive. Unfortunately, I can seem to get the drive down to 200g's. It is running 10.9.1 and all the photos from Lightroom5 and iPhoto have been removed. I have Office 2011 on the drive and that's about it. I can't figure out what is taking up all the disk space.
I have 10.9.1 on a desktop and it runs off a 256g SSD that isn't half full. It has full versions of Lightroom5, Photoshop CC, and Office (although I have several hard drives for image and document storage.
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About “Other”
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6047
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
Locating Large files
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13806
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677?viewlocale=en_US
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> Workstation: Windows 98SE with client32 v3.4
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I am running 3.5.3, with FCP7. Yesterday, cancelled a queue, and deleted the files it created (I messed up the format). However, I have just noticed that I am missing about 40GB on my external drive, and 15GB on my Macintosh HD drive. I suspect that Compressor created somekind of hidden/temp file, because the computer was not used for anything else since this happened. The difference between 'Summary Info' of the entire drive, and 'Get Info' on the drive itself is how I know some kind of hidden file is taking up this space. I cannot find any answer to this problem online.
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I've got a 60gb Macbook. I'm using Whatsize to figure out what's been eating my hard disk space, but it still doesn't make sense. I'm the only user on my computer, and my home folder says I've used about 43 gigs with about 12 left. Using Whatsize, it calculates my use to be about 21 gigs, which is what I figured it to be, adding up my music, photos, docs, and apps. But on the sidebar of the Whatsize app, it says that I've used 43 gigs in my home folder. So what is eating up the extra 22-ish gigs on my hard disk that my home folder says I'm supposedly using? I was poking around Whatsize and under Macintosh HD-->Users, I found something weird. I've got 2 accounts under the same name ".USER" and "USER". The one without the period before it contains all of my files and docs and stuff (and 21 gigs, exactly what I've been using), while the other one just says "USER.sparseimage" and the sparseimage is 26 gigs! What is the sparseimage and can I delete it? If anyone can help, I'd appreciate this! Thanks!

Hi,
I had the same problem with FileVault (FV) on my MacBook when I deleted a master copy of a iphoto DVD. The cdr file (ca. 5GB) disappeared but the space was still occupied.
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Welcome To  Discussions mfidelman!
What were you backing up, and what method were you using?
"...the disk went from 15G of 55G used to 52G used)."
Considering the small amount of free space presently available, I think it could be extremely risky, to download anything at this point.
Insufficient available space, can cause performance issues, system corruption, and possible loss of data.
Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.
Try the procedure below first.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
This will execute the daily script that is sheduled to run every night.
When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:
sudo periodic weekly
This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.3.x, authored by Michael Conniff.
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
ali b

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I've been using a 400GB partition on an external drive for Time Machine backups for some time and it's had plenty of room to work with. I upgraded to Yosemite recently and all was well with the Time Machine backups.
Yesterday I downloaded Yosemite again to install it on a second drive so that I would have a second bootable drive. Today I got notice that there was not enough space on my Time Machine backup drive. Suddenly the 400GB was not enough and my primary boot drive had swollen to 480GB. I don't know what it had been, but obviously there is now a lot more on it than there was.
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Where does the App Store stash downloads in case that's it?
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Any ideas would be appreciated.

Ok, I may have found a possible solution. I found this at stack exchange. It's not the best option and it requires a simple shell command, and will not be able to be used to restore from Time Machine, but for backing up one or more directory, at least in the short term, this will work. Here it is:
There seems to be an issue with Yosemite renaming the computer local host by adding (#) after the computer name. There are other reports of this happening in a thread on MacRumors Forum and I believe a few people have blamed this as a cause of time machine backup failures. I've tried a few of the suggestions in the thread but so far none have worked. I've stopped using time machine for now and reverted to an old bash rsync script.
A really simple solution is to open the terminal and type:
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Hope this helps!
to read the full discussion go to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/151662/os-x-yosemite-time-machine-ident ity-of-the-backup-disk-has-changed

Can't boot os 10.8 after setting in macintosh hd "get info" - "everyone" from "read/write" to "no access"

Hello to everyone,
trying to learn my mac (as this is my first one, it is a rMBP) I clicked "Get Info" to the "Macintosh HD". And after that, in the lower end, where it says about sharing and permissions, it had an option "Everyone" which was assigned as "Read/Write". I changed that setting to "No Access". After that the OS was like dead (stuck), in the sense that the mouse was moving, but you couldn't do anything. None of the applications or the buttons were working. So I turned off the laptop from the power button, and then I pressed it again to turn it on. It tries to load Mac OS, but it stucks at the white display with the gray apple in the middle and tries to load forever. I tried to boot with Shift button pressed (safe mode) but it does the same.
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Missing disk space - 'get info' differs from 'du'

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