TimeMachine & Finder's Calculation of Folder Size

There is a glaring error in how the Finder calculates the size of any given folder for the TimeMachine backups.
According to the Finder, I have a Backups.backupdb folder whose size is 57.86Gb. Yet when I view the folder as a list, the size of each of the 12 folders I have are as follows in Gb:
35.25
34.71
34.99
34.96
34.96
34.96
34.96
34.93
34.21
28.08
28.20
This add up to 405.54Gb!
Obviously with a 120Gb drive, this is an error. So, why doesn't each folder accurately reflect the actual size of the enclosed files?

Time machine uses hard links for files that have not changed since the last backup. IOW, if a file hasn't changed, TM simply creates a hard link to the original file. With hard links, there is no way to discern the original file from the new one. Each new hard link just references the original inode. Each file has a link count that tells how many directory entries link to the same inode. So, all you can really tell is how many directory entries reference the same inode.
So, when Finder (or du or whatever) tries to calculate the size of a Folder (directory) it simply counts the size of all files in the directory (including hard links). Hard linked files that show up in two different directories will count against the size of both directories.

Similar Messages

Finder won't display folder size in "Size" column or Info window

Normally, the Finder window will display a folder's size in the Size column. However, I have one folder which shows as "Zero KB" in the Size column. When I open the General Info window, the Size reads as "Zero KB on disk (Zero bytes) for 0 items."
In order to get the folder size I have to go into the folder, select all folders (there's many), then with either the Summary Info or Inspector window, it'll show the folder size ("185.32 GB on disk").
Why is this occurring in only this folder? Is it because it's a large folder or a folder with many subfolders?
I'm running Snow Lep 10.6.2. The folder is on an external drive in FAT32 format. I've already tried deleting the "com.apple.finder.plist" file and rebooting.
Thanks for any help.

go to view menu->show view options and check the box 'calculate all sizes". then click "use as defaults".

Stop Finder from "calculating folder size" or just move along little doggie

My iMac OSX 10.6.7 has recently adopted some new behavior.
Frequently, but not always, when I go to either save a document or attach a document to an email, or otherwise access the Finder from somewhere other than in Finder itself, I get a folder icon and an indication that Finder is "Calculating folder size" before it will display into the next column to allow for saving or accessing.
I saw in the magazine Macworld that I should try unchecking the "Calculate All Sizes" options in FInder>View>Show View Options window, but that checkbox and option do not appear. When I go to FInder>View>Show View Options, all I have are: Always Open in Column View (checkbox), Text Size (dropdown), Show Icons (checkbox), Show Icon Preview (checkbox), Show Preview Column (checkbox) and Arrange By (dropdown).
The problem is particularly pernicious with Word/Office 2011. When I go to "Save As" I get a spinning beachball for a good 15 to 20 seconds before Finder even appears, and then when it does, I get another 5 to 15 seconds of "calculating folder size." I have read that Word 2011 has this problem, but I'm not sure if my circumstance is normal or worse.
So, why is this doing this now when it has never done it before, and if unchecking "calculate all sizes" is a possible fix, where is that option?
I did empty all caches, repaired all permissions, and did the other things that a good little mac owner is supposed to do to keep the machine squeaky clean.

This is about as minimal as Finder lets it get -
As far as I can tell that arrangement is displayed only when viewing the Desktop.
Finder uses a slightly longer one for a window whose view is set to Icon -
...and the one I posted previously for windows whose view is set to List.
In Finder, there is actually only one View Options display and it is live; what is shown in it will change as you change the view mode for a window, and also will change to reflect the choices/settings if you click on a different window.
Perhaps Path Finder has altered how that behaves. However, try some experimenting. Open the View Options display, and then try navigating into a nest of folders. Try highlighting different things in the Path Finder displays - the name of a folder in a list, the name of a column display, etc. At some point you may be able to access the long form for the particular folder's window.
On the other hand, Path Finder seems to act by changing how Finder's info is displayed. In doing so, it may also be interfereing with Finder's ability to present applicable choices in the View Options screen (perhaps because Finder is not coded to understand Path Finder). If you determine that is indeed the case, suggest you send a 'bug' report back to the publisher, explaining the problem and asking them to fix it in a future release of Path Finder.

Finder Folder Size Calculations

When I'm archiving, I have to do a lot of Get Info to calculate the folder sizes for DVD burning. Problem I'm having is the file size calculations start taking forever after working for a few minutes, or they don't calculate at all. Usually works fine when I start but after a minute or so It's like the computer get's tired and just stops. Even if it's a 1mb folder it will have trouble.
Is this normal? Seems really odd that something so incredibly simple can make my archiving process so difficult.
Files reside on a network HD.
Thanks for any help.

I'd create a disk image of appropriate size, mount it, copy items to it until it tells you there's no more room. Then, burn it.

File / Folder size... How do Finder gets it?

Hi there!
While checking some of my hardrives for sucessfull shell script execution backups, i noticed that Finder took a loooot of time to provide the info about the Folder / File size on the Information window, while a simple ls -l could provide on the fly values regarding file or folder size, as always, fast simple and faithfull unix mindset!
Well, that makes me wonder, how does Finder calculates those values? Anyone got an hint?
Does it make it all by himself, if so. WHY? Been an "posix" system, shouldn't he be using whats already provided by its *nix heritage?
In this case, the value is already there, why don't use it and simply parse it to the desired format (MB / GB / TB)?
Maybe this could be only one of several features (GUI) that could improve it's performance from being more "conscious" of the system natively provided "toolkit".
Please, this is only my humble thouhgts on this, and please do shut me up if totally wrong!
Hope to get some nice and interesting feedback from the OS X community!
If there's a better spot to start this kind of discussion, please do mention it, i will appreciate it!
Best regards.

Properties. Short Cuts, Change Icon resolved the issue after restarting. Problem resolved.. Thank you for all the help Dwain

How can I get Finder to recalculate folder sizes?

How can I get the Finder to recalculate folder sizes?
I had a folder called "architecture 600," with lots of large files in it; when I checked it with command-i, the Finder told me it contained 691 MB of information.
I then moved most of the files to another folder (not just to the desktop, but to a new folder in the Documents folder). However, when I select "architecture 600" and press command-i, Finder still tells me it's 691 MB. When I open up "architecture 600," there are only three items in it, which total 305 MB.
I've tried removing and re-adding the size column in the enclosing folder, and turning off and then back on the "calculate all sizes" checkbox in the view options (command-j) for the enclosing folder. The finder still gets the size of the folder wrong.
This is happening with lots of folders, not just "architecture 600," by the way.

This has been a bug since OS X 10.0. As far as I know, the only way to get Finder to accurately reflect the size of a folder after moving data out of it is to add another folder (or file) to it, even an empty folder will trigger the Finder to recalculate the folder's size.

Finding Folder Size including subfolders and files

Hi Friends,
Could you please Help in getting a Folder size through pure java.The folder contains subfolders and files.I have done rest of the things related to file operation and i can help in other things if you could please help in this regard.
thanks and regards
Avanish
Avanish Kumar Singh
Software Engineer
Samsung SDS India Development Center
Bangalore-560 001
[email protected]
[email protected]

thanks bbrita !
I too did the way it has given in reply but thats taking huge resource so if you know any direct way to find the directory size please let me know.
thanks and regards
avanish

How do I find the folder size.

Using the finder, I can find a file by size, but how can i find folders of a particular size? I need to clean my hard drive and I'm looking for all folders that are larger than 3GB. Is this possible?

OmniDiskSweeper is a very nice utility for finding where all the storage on your disk is collecting.
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/>
In the Finder, you can use
Finder -> File -> Find...
click on the "Kind" pop-up and select "other", then search for "size" and check the box.
Now you can search for "Size" "*Greater Than*".
If you wish to use the Terminal, there is the /usr/bin/find command
find /starting_directory -size +123M

How do I get folder sizes?

How can I get the finder to calculate folder sizes?
I've clicked Calculate all sizes in view options.
Even when I ask for info on a particular folder, I get a blank.
It gives the sizes of files but never for folders: just two little dashes
Is this a bug, or is there some extra button I now have to push?

I believe there's a bug in the Finder that will prevent it from calculating folder sizes. I've only run into it a couple times: for example, Size in the Finder's Inspector window always shows -- (which is normal until the Finder calculates the size). In this case, the Finder doesn't calculate the size, but quitting and relaunching the Finder works to restore proper behavior.

How to find out when a folder or a file has been renamed?

I need to find out when a folder and some files have been renamed.
This happened when Mac OS X was 10.6 (Leopard Snow), now the Max OS X is Lion.
I use standard HFS+ filesystem format.
In Lion apparently there is a file property "Date Added" that change if a file is renamed, but the same property seems to be unused (e.g. -/-) before Lion.
I have Time Machine backups that help me to know that rename happened within a certain week, but I was looking for something more accurate (at least day accuracy).
If file system metadata can't help, I'm wondering if there is some log that track the first time spotlight indexed a specific file.
Thank you
/Andrea

Maybe you could keep tabs of the file size. If the file size grows (which it will do each time the writing process flushes that files output buffer), then the file was written to.
What I'd like to know is if there is some way to monitor the entire drive for changes and respond to stuff like that. I know that the Win32 API provides services that monitor the file system for changes, but I don't know if other OS's do... or if Java provides an interface to those features.

Folder size is twice that of its contents????

Startup Disk > Users > Username
My Username folder shows a folder size that is just about double the size of all of its visible folders. I can see this when viewed in the Finder in List View with Folder Size Shown as my default View setting.    Any idea how I can figure out what is going on?
thanks
Brad

Topher,
Before I saw your reply, I emptied my trash and that brought the folder size down to what it should be to match its contents. I should have remembered that. None the less, I did what you suggested once I read your message and here it is:
total 2240
drwxr-xrwx 34 brad 503       1156 Feb 27 16:13 .
drwxr-xr-x   7 root admin      238 Dec 1 08:00 ..
-r--------   1 brad 503          7 Dec 1 07:48 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@ 1 brad 503      12292 Mar 1 16:22 .DS_Store
drwx------   5 brad 503        170 Mar 1 16:42 .Trash
drwxr-x--x   4 brad 503        136 Apr 19 2011 .adobe
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 brad 503        102 Apr 27 2011 .autodesk
-rw-------   1 brad 503        546 Feb 15 2012 .bash_history
drwxr-xr-x   6 brad 503        204 Aug 28 2014 .blurb
drwx------   3 brad 503        102 Feb 27 2014 .cache
drwxr-xr-x   4 brad 503        136 Feb 27 2014 .config
drwx------   3 brad 503        102 Dec 6 2010 .cups
-rw-r--r--   1 brad 503    1109647 Sep 23 2011 .fonts.cache-1
drwxr-xr-x   2 brad 503         68 Jun 18 2013 .gs5
drwxr-xr-x   3 brad 503        102 Sep 6 2011 .local
-rw-r--r--   1 brad 503        239 Sep 6 2011 .mailcap
-rw-r--r--   1 brad 503        368 Sep 6 2011 .mime.types
drwxr-xr-x   3 brad 503        102 Dec 18 2012 .viewcd
-rw-r--r--   1 brad 503         90 Apr 17 2013 .vuescanrc
drwxr-xr-x   8 brad 503        272 Jun 26 2014 .wapi
drwxr-xr-x   4 brad 503        136 Dec 4 12:23 Applications
drwx------@ 3 brad 503        102 Dec 20 11:44 Creative Cloud Files
drwx---rwx@ 40 brad 503       1360 Mar 1 16:48 Desktop
drwx---rwx+ 7 brad 503        238 Nov 12 18:30 Documents
drwx------+ 3 brad 503        102 Feb 20 16:42 Downloads
drwx------@ 4 brad 503        136 Feb 22 22:43 Google Drive
drwxrwxr-x   5 brad admin      170 Dec 7 18:07 Incompatible Software
drwx------+ 66 brad 503       2244 Mar 1 15:07 Library
drwx------+ 5 brad 503        170 Sep 21 19:42 Movies

Search on Folder size?

Hi, everyone.
When I use command-F to search in Finder, the Folder Size option doesn't seem to work at all. Whenever I type some number (ie, greater than 1 kb), nothing was found. Is this function broken? Nor does the Size of Application or the File pathname work also.
Thanks for any suggestions.

Hi Tempura
I believe that both Mike and I haven't yet to experience a corrupt index. Certainly in one case, I initiated it myself.
Although there appears a number have, if you analyse the postings, you find that more than not, the issues are not related to corrupt indexes.
Many issues are simply not understanding Spotlight, setting the Preference pane improperly, not letting Spotlight do a proper and complete indexing, messing around with the System prefs, not running Disk Utility to repair permissions after installing, updating or revising applications and the OS, insufficient ram, trying to index CDs, DVDs, servers, etc.
Personally, I find Spotlight amazing fast and accurate except when I have forgotten that I had adjusted the Preferance pane. I have tested various third-party products, and have tossed them out. Not that I don't share their unique functionalities, I just haven't found it to be advantageous to have them on board. Note that if you do install any third-party app, check to see how it may affect Tiger and all its utilities. There are some that will reset the preferences including Spotlight's and its ability to index.
If you haven't as yet, Apple and The XLab (the book especially) have some great stuff on Spotlight that is well worth reading. I say this, because no doubt, Spotlight is not going away and the introduction of Leopard will advance it even further, e.g., as described (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/spotlight.html), and certainly in Time Machine.
Good luck
Daniel

Folder size indication

It would be helpful when in folder view to be able to see the size of the folder - I fill folders until they are a DVD-worth and then archive and create a new folder (DAM approach). Currently I have to go to windows to see the size and then back to Bridge to decide what to do next.
A folder size indication when folder on Content panel + perhaps a right click to give properties etc. as per Windows.

This is about as minimal as Finder lets it get -
As far as I can tell that arrangement is displayed only when viewing the Desktop.
Finder uses a slightly longer one for a window whose view is set to Icon -
...and the one I posted previously for windows whose view is set to List.
In Finder, there is actually only one View Options display and it is live; what is shown in it will change as you change the view mode for a window, and also will change to reflect the choices/settings if you click on a different window.
Perhaps Path Finder has altered how that behaves. However, try some experimenting. Open the View Options display, and then try navigating into a nest of folders. Try highlighting different things in the Path Finder displays - the name of a folder in a list, the name of a column display, etc. At some point you may be able to access the long form for the particular folder's window.
On the other hand, Path Finder seems to act by changing how Finder's info is displayed. In doing so, it may also be interfereing with Finder's ability to present applicable choices in the View Options screen (perhaps because Finder is not coded to understand Path Finder). If you determine that is indeed the case, suggest you send a 'bug' report back to the publisher, explaining the problem and asking them to fix it in a future release of Path Finder.

Folder Size Exceed Disk Size

I am using Western Digital 2TB external HDD for Time Machine backup for 3 Mac. The remaining disk space now is 733GB. I am confused that one of the backup folder occupy more than 2TB. And the other 2 folders are still calculating since I started about 6 hours ago.
My 2 questions are:
1) Why the folder size is 3.13TB which is more than the physical size of the harddisk
2) Why it is taking such a long time to compute the disk space for the other two folder

Hi,
Actually, it may be a display error, anyway I would record this issue.
Although, I would give you some short description about this issue.
Files would have two properties about size:
Size: is the actual size of the file in bytes.
Size on disk: is the actual amount of space being take up on the disk.
I believe Windows Explorer is invoking GetCompressedFileSize function to retrieves the actual number of bytes of disk storage used to store a specified file. If the file is located on a volume that supports compression and the file is
compressed, the value obtained is the compressed size of the specified file.
We can see everything works well in Windows 8 and previous versions. To prove this is a misread issue, let’s use GetCompressedFileSize function to see if we can retrieve the right value of compressed file size.
Here is the first picture in Windows 8:
The second is in Windows 8.1, but we use PowerShell script to retrieve the right value:
About the whole process, you can refer to this article:
Get the size of a file on disk
http://www.powershellmagazine.com/2013/10/31/pstip-get-the-size-of-a-file-on-disk/
GetCompressedFileSize function
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364930(v=vs.85).aspx
So, I think it just don't read the compressed file size successfully, so it use the "Size" value directly to calculate the Size on disk.
Hope this could make it clear.
Alex Zhao
TechNet Community Support

Folder size in OS 10.4.7?

I've upgraded an eMac to 10.4.7, but now there is no way to calculate folder size in the Get Info window. Other users say that there is a box to check on the View Options submenu, but there is nothing on the submenu I see.
Is this possible in 10.4.7 or is it a problem with the 4 year old eMac?
Thanks for any help. I need to clean up some files that take up lots of disk space, but need to know where the biggest hogs are located.
-wayne

But what do you mean by not deleting things?
Many files located outside your home folder are necessary for Mac OS X to run correctly, and shouldn't be deleted; this includes several folders which aren't visible in the Finder by default. Basically, if you don't know what a specific item's purpose is, don't delete it.
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TimeMachine & Finder's Calculation of Folder Size

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