Missing hard drive space on Z61m with Windows XP

I have a Z61m running XP that I want to upgrade to Windows 7. Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tells me I need at least 1 6GB of space. My machine only has 12.6 GB of available space on C. I have checked the properties of each folder and file (hidden or not) on the C drive, and recorded the space each entry takes, trying to account for where all of the space has gone. I have turned off hibernation and recovered 1.5 GB. I have checked the disk partitioning, and the C drive has 88.6 GB assigned to it, and 12.6 GB free. My list of folders and files total 20 GB including the pagefile at 2 GB. So, I am missing more than 50 GB of space! I keep hoping there are some useless files I can purge. Any ideas out there? Thanks for your help.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello billbrinsfield,
most probably you cannot see the Rescue&Recovery backups. You may want to try to open Rescue&Recovery in Advanced mode and see "View all backups". If there are backups you are not aware of, you may want to delete them, menu "Advanced" / "Delete backups", to free the space. However, you may want to copy them on DVDs or on an external storage first. You should definitely have a backup of your system before you try to upgrade it.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
_St

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Where's my missing hard drive space?

I posted earlier about this, it may be a bit off topic but if anyone can offer a clue, I would appreciate it.
I got my win 7 upgrade and was waiting until vista started giving me headaches or the win7 service pack1 came out to upgrade...vista got me to upgrade today and I have to admit it was much less painful than i anticipated.
My question is about the missing hard drive space on my Idea center K230 on the box and on the side of the comp it claims a 640 HD (it claims in small print that up to 18gb may be used for the service partition) I questioned this when i first got it and even after deleting all the preloaded crap it was still saying 540 available out of 580GB....then I read that Lenovo has a huge partition for backup. So when I do my upgrade to win 7- 64 bit, I do a clean install and delete the smaller partition and reformat and expand the larger but before installing the new OS it says I have 596 available, so where the hell is the other 44GB of hard drive...did Lenovo rip us off and put 600GB hard drives in the K230's or is there a hidden partition still left that I cant find?
I am running everything off of my 596GB C: drive, I have my virus stuff and video card extras loaded, everything from the upgrade and 21 available patches and new drivers for most of my stuff....right now I am at at 575gb available and if i can ever find a printer driver that works I will create a backup point or disc from there, whatever win 7 allows. I never wanted the Lenovo one button back up and thought it was stupid to put a big glowing button on the keyboard that wipes your system back to when it came out of the box...I had nightmares of someone getting curious and going "what does this button do?"
.I notice I have a program files folder and a program files (x86) folder with a bunch of redundant files. what's the deal with this is Lenovo still hiding a backup program (maybe in that hidden partition?) that fills my hard drive twice as fast or is there a purpose for the file copies?
Any info on the above questions would be appreciated, and for those of you just looking for upgrade info I have good news, when you finally get your win7 upgrade disc it is the easiest windows installation ever, almost copmpletely automated, and very fast. So far the only sticking point is finding a printer driver, but I have 3 printers i can try, maybe one is supported.

Hi wise2u!
You can read all the details about how storage manufacturers use multiples of 1000 to measure disk space, and Windows reports it in multiples of 1024, and there is some overhead for Windows, or you can just use this rule of thumb from wikipedia:
A general rule of thumb to quickly convert the manufacturer's hard disk capacity to the standard Microsoft Windows formatted capacity is 0.93*capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs less than a terabyte and 0.91*capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs equal to or greater than 1 terabyte.
0.93 * 640GB = 595GB, which is about what you're seeing.
I don't work for Lenovo. I'm a crazy volunteer!

Missing hard drive space after aborted attempt at sharing iMovie project with YouTube

So, recently I tried sharing an iMovie project with YouTube. I clicked on the project in my project library, then selected share with YouTube from the drop down menu. I chose to share it as a HD 720 project. At this point, I had 27 GB of free hard drive space. After the project was converted (or whatever it's called, a process which took about half an hour, and which left me with about 6.5 GB of hard drive space), but before the project was actually exported or shared with or uploaded or published to YouTube (the second step), I saw that it was going to take three hours to upload, so I decided I wanted to share it as a non-HD video, in order to save time and space on my HD. I cancelled the upload. I then deleted the project in my imovie projects folder (since it now had the HD logo beside the name), intending to just start over and share the project in 960x540. Thing is, after deleting every trace of it I could find in iMovie, in my Documents Folder, in my Movies folder, and in iTunes, I only reclaimed 4 GB of space on my hard drive (leaving me with 10 GB). So what happened to the missing 17 GBs, and how can I get them back? Also, the amount of space used in order to share that project just seems excessive to me, so I realize that something else might be going on here. Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments?
Thanks.

You're in the wrong forum.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/ilife/imovie

Missing hard drive space after failed migration assistant transfer

When I first got my 13" macbook pro (about a month ago), I attempted to use Migration Assistant to move my files from my old 15" MBP. After starting the transfer, my old MBP locked up (or so I thought) & I had to quit the process. When I looked to see if anything transfered to the 13", I couldn't find anything, but there was hard drive space, maybe about 15 GB, missing. I looked everywhere I knew to look, in all folders all over my computer but came up emptyhanded. Although I've been using macs for years, I have little knowledge of all the inner workings/hidden files, etc. so I've reached the end of my abilities. I've searched all over & have been unable to find an answer. I had originally decided to just let it go & deal with a few missing gigabytes, but I just have to know what's going on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Problem solved! Ran Disk Utility not in recover mode again, and it identified that the logical size wasn't right. Repair Disk while logged in - and at the upper level "Macintosh HD" on the left sidebar - fixed the issue, and I'm going to not attempt to run Boot Camp again for a while just in case :-p

Missing Hard Drive Space + Other Issues

My Macbook's been acting funny lately - it wouldn't always come out of sleep, and every now and then an application would crash but its icon would stay in the Dock and there would be no way to get rid of it. When I tried typing in my password on the login screen (when it was coming out of sleep) the field would keep losing focus and delete everything in it. I have the 120GB hard drive (It says 111, but I assume that's the 1024 vs 1000 thing), and about a year and a half ago it failed, but I brought it to the Apple Store and they gave me a new one, which has been working fine.
The macbook had been doing some weird stuff, so I've been using the computer I'm typing on for the last few weeks, but two days ago I decided to reset the PRAM and SMC and try using the macbook again. It was working fine, but then I locked the screen and did something else for a while. I went to go shut it down that night, and it wouldn't show me the login screen for unlocking the screen, and it showed me the spinning cursor instead. I just shut the top, and the next morning it was just giving me a black screen when I opened the top.
I held down the power button to shut it off, and later in the day turned it back on again, and it seemed to be working. I was running a few applications (Firefox, Bitpim, and Transmission) when it started crashing again. The menu bar didn't work, the dock wouldn't show, keyboard shortcuts didn't work, etc. I shut the top and went somewhere for a few hours.
I came back, and was going to shut down the computer by holding the power button, so while it was still in sleep I unplugged both of my external hard drives. When I unplugged the USB one it turned on the computer, so I opened it, typed in my password, and plugged the drives back in. The computer seemed to be working again, but about a minute later a window popped up saying my startup disk's space was low. When I'd shut the top that morning there had been around 40 - 50GB left, but now there was about 500MB left on the disk. The size of my User folder was still the same - around 20GB, and I'm trying to see the size of the System folder now, but the hard drive is being extremely slow. I'm also trying to use Disk Inventory X, but it's taking an extremely long time (like 10 minutes for a file that's only a few KB).
The dock also seems to be "frozen" - no new applications I open show in the dock, even if I'm using them, and when I clicked to open them in finder they showed up in my recently opened folder in the Dock, but didn't actually open. I clicked on them again through that folder and they actually open, but it still doesn't show them in finder. Applications that I've quit (and their process is gone in Activity Monitor) are still in the Dock with the little dot under them that they're open.
The Macbook is still under warranty, but I live far away from the closest Apple Store, and it would be difficult for me to get anyone to drive me there, so I'd prefer some sort of a solution where I wouldn't need to bring it in (But I know I'll probably need to, and I will be able to, just not for a week or two).
Are any of the problems related? Is there anything I can do on my own to fix it? Should I try rebooting it, even if the hard drive is almost empty (Doesn't that cause problems booting it?), or should I wait until Disk Inventory X finishes first?
Edit: There was a folder in /Volumes that had the name of my external hard drive, and had some files in it (The ones that were being used in Transmission), so I deleted those and got the hard drive space back. All of the other problems are still happening though - my dock is still all screwed up, etc.
Message was edited by: cfogel

Also, some more details:
I while ago I tried rebooting and it just gave me a gray screen and played the startup chime over and over, but I held down the power button and tried again and it worked. However, when I boot it stays on the gray screen for a while before it shows me the apple logo, then it stays on that for a while before it shows me the spinning thing that it's loading. Also, once it boots it hangs on a blue screen for a while before letting me log in.
When I look in Console there's always a million "Feb 5 18:19:58 localhost kernel[0]: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad: family specific matching fails" for every piece of hardware from every boot.
For a while when I tried verifying my hard drive using Disk Utility it crashed the computer. I've tried repairing permissions, checked my SMART status, and used various maintenance tools.

Missing Hard Drive Space/private root folder

Hello Everyone!
I've been having a problem with my iMac. Something seems to be eating up my hard drive space. I downloaded Disk Inventory X, and discovered I have a 200GB private folder under the root user!?! I've read on the forum that I shouldn't delete this, but I obviously need to clean this out. Is that advisable, and if so how do I do that? Also, is there any reason why it's so large? I've also read on these forums it should only be around 5GB. I'm sure this folder is getting larger by the minute (2 hours ago I had 8GB, now I have 6GB) and I'm getting the notification every few days that I'm running out of hard drive space. Thanks in advance!

If the /private/var/log/ folder is taking up the space, put that path into the Finder's Go to Folder command in the Go menu and delete the logs, or open one and look for one or more lines repeated over and over.
(49823)

Missing hard drive space and files after Genius Bar installed new Hardware

I took my computer to genius bar. They installed a new CD/DVD drive. My computer wouldn't load when I got it home, so I reinstalled OSX and now I am missing tons of hard drive space and all my old files (which have been backed up). How do I fix this?

"DURING WARRANTY SERVICE IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE CONTENTS OF THE APPLE
PRODUCT’S STORAGE MEDIA WILL BE LOST, REPLACED OR REFORMATTED. IN
SUCH AN EVENT APPLE AND ITS AGENTS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOSS
OF SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, DATA OR OTHER INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE
STORAGE MEDIA OR ANY OTHER PART OF THE APPLE PRODUCT SERVICED.
Following warranty service your Apple Product or a replacement product will be returned to you
as your Apple Product was configured when originally purchased, subject to applicable updates.
You will be responsible for reinstalling all other software programs, data and information.
Recovery and reinstallation of other software programs, data and information are not covered
under this warranty."
http://images.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/cpuwarranty.pdf

Missing Hard Drive Space (15 GB unaccounted for)

I've had my Mini for about six months now. Love it. Everything is working perfectly except for one oddity that I'm hoping someobody can help me understand and/or correct:
I seem to be missing about 15 GB of hard drive space for no reason - at least that I can understand.
Here's what I get from the info screen on my drive:
Capacity: 74 GB
Available: 5.9 GB
Used: 68.31
All I can account for is 52.22 GB
Music: 41.11 GB
Movies: 4.33 GB
Pictures: 3.6 GB
Library: 547 MB
System: 1.81 GB
Documents 832.7 MB
Any idea why I seem to be missing 15 GB?
Thanks in advance.

I run Mac Janitor about once a week and still have
this problem. I'm assuming that is similar to the
program you mentioned.
To address that specific point: No. Mac Janitor performs one specific set of routine tasks (not all that critical - and not needed as frequently as once per week) while YASU performs a range of system-related maintenance tasks, which include those Mac Janitor handles, but go well beyond what it is capable of doing.
Yours is just such a situation where YASUs functions could prove useful in themselves, and would in any event help in narrowing down the cause of the loss of space, since it will either release the used drive space, or in failing to do so, confirm that it is being used by files. In the former case the problem is resolved, and in the latter it would then lead to use of software such as 'WhatSize' (downloadable from www.versiontracker.com) to examine the entire contents of the drive and establish exactly which files and directories are taking up what amount of storage space. Most mysterious losses of space such as yours can be readily resolved once you know where the space has gone!

Asl, aslmanager and Missing Hard Drive space

I noticed recently I had been running out of hard drive space. Could not figure out why. I went through and cleaned up personal files and removed old applications, but the drive space kept evaporating. Started to really investigate today and found that my /private/var/log/asl directory was up to 102GB.
Insane.
I looked around and read all I could just to make a determination as to whether or not I could delete them without killing my Mac. I found that I could and did, recovering the space.
The reason I'm posting is to hopefully make others aware that this might be happening on their Macs and to try to see if anyone has some insight into what went wrong and how to prevent this from happening again.
I'm certain writing 102 GBs of log files since Dec. 18 was not Apple's intention. I see that aslmanager is a part of 10.5.6 (which I'm running), but do not see the process active in my Activity Monitor. Could this be why the folder filled up with so many asl files (2,046)? Does anyone have any idea how I can repair so the asl works properly?

I thought it must have something to do with that. I'd been thinking that it might be the UserEventAgent (Not Responding) that is always running in the activity monitor until I force quit it. But this morning I cleared it out again (there were about 5 files making up about 76MB) and dropped the kids off at school. When I came back, there was another 57.7MB file in there with a new one being written. 57MB seems to be the maximum file size before it creates a new one. It was writing 232 errors per second. Yow!
I opened Console up and the log was filled with Javascript errors related to The Weather Channel screen saver I run. That seems to have fixed it. I'll post back in a few hours to note what size the asl file is. Right now it's at 8K.
This problem began on December 18, after I installed the 10.5.6 update. That was the earliest date of the .asl files I deleted yesterday and the last date the old asl.db file was updated.

Missing hard drive space since upgrade

Hi,
Since upgrading to Yosemite I have lost loads of hard drive space. I have run 'du -chxd 1 /' as soon in terminal and the below is what it returned. The user folder is showing 329GB but in Finder, using get info the folder returns 49.2GB??
Any and all help would be appreciated.
Cheers
Daves-iMac:~ Dave$ sudo du -chxd 1 /
WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.
To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.
Password:
33M /.DocumentRevisions-V100
12M /.fseventsd
608M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
66G /Applications
2.3M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
1.0K /home
3.4G /Library
1.0K /net
0B /Network
2.3G /private
1004K /sbin
3.9G /System
329G /Users
498M /usr
4.0K /Volumes
405G /
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Solved, I used DaisyDisk which displayed that my other half was storing loads of iTunes data. I don't understand why Finder did not pick this up though?

Missing Hard Drive Space After Failed BC Partition

Hello everyone,
I was just trying to install Windows 7 on my iMac (Late 2013) using the Boot Camp Assistant, but the partition process froze, so I ended up quitting Boot Camp (I know, I know, bad idea).
Now, I seem to be missing about a TB of hard disk space, even though the partition I was trying to create was only about 350 GB. My 3TB Fusion Drive is now showing 1.91 TB of space total. Also - probably related - everything is showing up as "Other", even though it used to be broken up into Audio/Movies/Photos, etc.
I attempted to start into Recovery mode, repaired the disk permissions (there were few problems, if any) and repaired the disk itself (it said that the Mac was fine), and I've looked at Disk Utility both in and out of Recovery mode to see if there's missing space in the partition tab, but it looks like it's just not there.
Strangely, here it recognizes that the disk is 3.12 TB, but I can't adjust the partition size, even in Recovery mode. I tried running Boot Camp again to see if I could just do a quick Windows partition (20 GB) and restore the space, but I get the error that the disk can't be partitioned. I tried doing fsck in Single User mode and logging in with Safe Mode (where I am now), just to see if either would fix the issue - but no luck.
I do have Time Capsule (2TB) so my stuff is backed up, and fortunately my Mac seems to run fine in normal mode, but is there any way to reclaim the "lost" space, or do a system wipe just to get everything back where it should be? This is
Let me know if I can provide any further information, and I appreciate your help!

Problem solved! Ran Disk Utility not in recover mode again, and it identified that the logical size wasn't right. Repair Disk while logged in - and at the upper level "Macintosh HD" on the left sidebar - fixed the issue, and I'm going to not attempt to run Boot Camp again for a while just in case :-p

External Hard Drive to be used with windows and Mac

I shall paint the picture;
I have a very nice mobile hard drive on it's way to me, and I shall be upgrading to leopard at some point soon after receiving it, my MBP has a 120gb internal HDD and the external on it's way is 160gb .
I will be using it as a time machine HD , but will also be using it to transfer from my mac to college/university PCs.
So, do any of ya'l out there know a good way of going about it? My thoughts are along the lines of creating a separate windows/mac partition because Time Machine I assume uses HFS+ and as far as I am aware, windows is unable to use this.
I am not 100% sure on this so any help or corrections or indeed alternate solutions are welcome.
Only requirements are that it's with my MBP and G-Tech G-Drive mini only, no extra bits and bobs.
Thank you in advance

A 160 GB drive may be a bit small to use to back up a 120GB drive with TimeMachine... and have a separate partition to use for Windows files. While your MacBook Pro's 120GB drive may not be close to full yet... it will likely continue to grow in time. TimeMachine keeps multiple copies of files that you change allowing you to go "back in time" to various points. It will use as much space as is available on the drive. You may want to keep a larger external desktop drive for your TimeMachine backup... or dedicate your entire 160GB to it.

Missing hard drive space after bootcamp partition

After making a 60gb partition with Boot Camp Assistant, Bootcamp closed without error message (i assumed it was trying to restart but i had programs running). However now in disk utility or when i try to run the windows disc, there is no partition available even though the 500gb hard drive shows up as 420gb used and 18gb unused (and 499gb big).
I have tried repairing in disk utility on startup
i have reset the NVRAM or whatever it is called.
Can't run boot camp assistaint again because it says i require at least 10gb of space.
Can anyone help me finish the installation?

If done correctly it should not be necessary to reinstall anything, just restore the clone.
Buy 2 drives, a backup drive should be at least as large as the drive it is backing up, and yours is almost full at the moment.
My suggestion, clone your internal drive to an external, this is for restoration. The restoration can be done to any compatible drive so buy the biggest you can afford/fit.
Backup is another issue, if you choose Time Machine your existing internal drive will be too small to accommodate a 1Tb replacement drive for very long, but it's a start.
Choose what you wish to do, post back if you need assistance.

Missing hard drive space: 600GB?

I have a mid 2011 21.5" 2.7 GHZ I5 IMac with a 1 TB HDD. It is reporting that the startup disk is full (<8gb left).
I have surveyed the hard drive and found the "\users" folder is using 972GB.
The sole "user" folder (me) is using 972 GB
An exploration and sum of "folder size" of each of the underlying folders (there are 8: Audio books, Desktop, Documents, Download, Movies, Music, Picture and Public) collectively sums to 316,6GB.
The system tool in "about the iMac" (storage tab) shows "other" allocated a 893,97GB.
Where is the missing 640GB plus of space? Please can anyone advise me how to identify where space has been allocated and how to rectify the problem?
I have done the following:
All updates are installed
Verified the partition - no faults
Timemachine - never been activated
re-indexed spotlight as suggested in a support article.
deleted a dormant user (6GB) and deleted their data
I have emptied the trash.
What else can i do?

Guys,
The culprit is Disk Drill... It basically kept down deep all files (hudreds of Gb) I deleted over the past year from my 750 Gb Harddrive...
Even after deleting Disk Drill it leaves a hidden partition called .cleverfiles. After using the application FreeDiskSpace I discovered that my 750 Gb harddrive was storing including the deleted files deep down a total of 1,5 Tb and that the famous partition .cleverfiles had a folder containing over 1,29 Tb of deleted files... the name of that hidden folder is hlink.ref
Well at least I discovered where was the 450 Gb Space Gorilla on my HD, which in fact happens to be a 1.29 Tb monster of files...
I haven't deleted it yet, as it is a goldmine of files I deleted and lost ages ago... at least I will be able to recover some of the files I've been crying for... Also I want to be sure how to delete it a and make it disappear for ever...
Well no need to spend 12 bucks when you can download FreeDiskSpace for free from the AppStore...
Hope this will help you solve the problem...

Need more hard drive space. Help with install WD My Book Studio 1TB EHD.

My MacBook Pro has no more disk space. I'm not tech savy so I'm hesitant to install Western Digital My Book Studio 1TB purchased. I read somewhere not to install the smartware that comes with this external drive because it might cause problems when running Time Machine. I want to move my photos on to EHD to free up space and start up Time Machine. Is there anything I should do first before attempting this. I have not upgraded to Lion yet should I do this after freeing up space and setting up Time Machine. I'm wondering if it will ask me questions during process that I won't be sure to accept or not. I'd appreciate any help or tips.

Do not install any software from WD. Prep the drive as follows:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Missing hard drive space on Z61m with Windows XP

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