What is taking up hard drive space?

hello.
I have a power mac (pre intel) quad core desktop running 10.5.8.
I have noticed it being very sluggish lately.
From taking 5 minutes to boot up, to browsers taking longer to launch(with the color wheel spinning longer until the browser is fully ready), to inputing text into fields in a browser window(the text gets entered a second or two after typing). Even when I open a finder window, the icons for every file, as well as the size listing of each file/folder will take like 10 seconds to start loading one at a time. I never noticed that before.
So I opened disk utility, and noticed that I have filled up 160GB out of the 233GB that this hard drive has. That seemed like a really high number.
So I added up the total size of the home folders in all 4 users on this computer, and they add up to 27GB. The system folder is 4 gigs, and the main Library folder at the top level is 51 gigs. I don't think there is anything left. That adds up to 82GBs. Where is the other 78GBs coming from?
I know I'm missing something, but I can't figure out what.
Even still, I don't know that this is the reason for my computer to act sluggish, but now I'm curious how I'm filling up so much hard drive space.
Any thoughts on finding this info out, and/or fixing the sluggish issue?
Thanks!!

On the space issue, has everybody emptied trash? You each have your own and if somebody doesn't... There's varous utilities for scanning drives for space usage. Some are free, others not. I think Omnidisksweeper is free. Search the Discussions for this subject and the others will probably be mentioned.
A few GB are kind of hidden and not accounted for, I think. Some cache files, etc.
160? I mean only 160? That's peanuts by modern standards.
Slow computer. Might start by verifying hard drive with Disk Utility. Installing and using Applejack would be good too. Are you sure everybody is logged out and didn't leave a ton of applications running in their account?
I'm too lazy to remove the old formatting from my boilerplate post on this:
*Quick checks*
Have you emptied the Trash?
*Reading on hard drive space issues*
[Erasing free space results in erroneous full disk warning|http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=459623&seqNum=9]
[Where did my disk space go?|http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243]
[X-Lab: Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk|http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html]
[Amazing Disappearing Drive Space|http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html]
[Increase HD Free Space|http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd free-space-laptop.html]
[How to free up my disk space|http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html]
[Baby Boomer's Apple Discussions post|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10189607#10189607]
*Utilities for investigating drive space usage*
[Disk Inventory (free)|http://www.derlien.com/]
[OmniDiskSweeper (free)|http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/]
[WhatSize|http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/] (now shareware and only useful on <20GB drives until you buy it)
[GrandPerspective|http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/]

Similar Messages

What is using my hard drive space on my macbook pro

Something is using all my hard drive space and I cannot figure out what. Yesterday I had 120GB and now I have 120MB free and got a disk warning. I have noticed this past week that my space has been eaten up. My Mac Book Pro is 2 months old and I have not put any big or fancy programmes on it as I am still getting used to this being my first Mac. One of the selling points for getting a Mac is I heard its programmes took a lot less space. My previous PC that I had for 2 years had a 130GB hard drive and I had 20GB free when I gave it away. I cannot believe I have used all my 500GB hard drive space when I have only installed a few programmes on this one such as Notebook, Pages, and some accounting software. I cannot seem to find details of where the space is being used. Please help.

Mr_Joe wrote:
My Mac Book Pro is 2 months old
I cannot seem to find details of where the space is being used. Please help.
Empty the trash!
Where did my Disk Space go?
Slimming your hard drive
Seven ways to free up drive space
OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $.99 - FreeSpace shows you how much space is available on all local, connected, and network drives with a single click.
You are still under warranty plus you still have 90 days of free phone tech support. Take advantage of it before it runs out!

How do I delete Photo Stream photos that are taking up hard drive space in my Masters folder, but not actually appearing in any event, or on the interface at all?

A couple months ago, I activated photo stream using my apple ID. I was under the impression that all the photos uploaded to my photo stream would only use server space on icloud and wouldn't actually utilize disk space, or at the most, the option was available to only download specific photos to my hard drive. My hope was that I could upload the photos to a specific drive, and view the uploaded thumbs or low-res comps on any device as a reference.
This is not the case.
What I have found is that iphoto has been automatically downloading any and all photos uploaded to my photo stream. Not just the thumbnails, the entire thumbnail + all resolutions. I shoot RAW photos so in my case, the original averages about 15-25MB per photo.
I have been uploading directly to an iphoto library on an external hard drive specifically designated for handling all my RAW high-res images.
What has been happening is all those RAW files are also being uploaded directly to my iphoto library on my iMac and eating up memory which I cannot reclaim, even after deactivating my Photo Stream in preferences. We're talking almost 100 GB of memory is tied up right now.
I don't want to just go in and start deleting files and folders in my Masters folder, since I have heard this will break iphoto, but the photos in my photostream do not show up in any event and I need to reclaim the hard drive space.
How can I safely delete them?

If the files are loose inside the iPhoto library package here's one way to get them out:
1 - open your library, select all of the photos in the library and add a unique keyword, XXXX, to all of them.
2 - Rebuild the library with iPhoto Library Manager as follows:
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 - download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.>Click on the Add Library button,
2 - select the library you want to add from those in the selection window.
3 - make sure that in the rebuild window the checkbox "Scavange orphaned photos" is checked.
4 - now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the Library ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
5 - in the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed. Click on the Create button.
Note 1: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost.
Note 2: Your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.
3 - open the library, create a smart album with the criterial "Keyword is not XXXX".
4 - the smart album will include those photos that were not visible in your original library. Select them and use the key combination of Command+Option+Delete to move them to the iPhoto Trash bin.
5 - empty the iPhoto Trash bin via the iPhoto ➙ Empty iPhoto Trash Bin menu option.
6 - empty the Trash bin in the Dock to remove the files from your hard drive completely.
Be sure to read Note 1 above. You can use the new library without your books, slideshow, etc. and it will not contain those errant files. Of course delete the original library if the new one is satisfactory.

How do I find what's using my hard drive space

My wife has a 14" iBook. How do I find what's using all the hard-drive space? It only has a 40GB hard-drive (it's one of the older G3 models) but there isn't a lot loaded onto the HD. There is only 3GB space left. I've gone through every application and utility and document and every folder (document, movie, etc.) and the largest space-hogging folder is iTunes which uses 15GB because of the music. I can't find any singular folder that uses any sizeable HD space. I recently loaded Tiger so I don't know if Tiger uses the rest of the space or if it's just a combo of all the other applications.

You could download and use WhatSize to see what may be eating up the space.
With a 40 GB hard drive, you need to keep at least 6 GB free in order to avoid problems.

How do i find what is using my hard drive space?

My hard drive space on my Macbook pro has suddenly filled up. How do I find what is using up the space so that I can see what I need to delete?

Hi s,
This is an old list, but some should still be current:
Disk Inventory X: http://www.derlien.com/
OmniDiskSweeper: http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/download/
GrandPerspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/#download
SupaView: http://twinside.free.fr/supaview/
WhatSize ($12.99 and includes a duplicate finder): http://www.whatsizemac.com/
DaisyDisk: http://daisydiskapp.com/
http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

What happened to my hard drive space?

I installed a new Hitachi 80 gig drive into a PowerMac G4/500 256/ 27gb/ DVD-RAM/ Zip Graphite. Profiler read 74 GB. Fine. During a large file write, the power went out. On rebooting the Mac later, no hard drive. I ran DiskWarrior 3.03 on the drive and it came back onto the desktop. However, Profiler (and Disk Utility) no report the drive as being only 31.5 GB in capacity. I checked the drive using WhatSize and found no hidden files. I erased the drive using DiskUtility and have a drive reportedly clear of any and all files, but still claiming to be only 31.5 GB. In the old days, I would next have tried a low-level drive reformat but I'm told we don't do that anymore. What do we do? I am at a loss, here.

Version 3.0.3 is compatible with Tiger, so it shouldn't have done any harm, and I've never had Disk Warrior do anything like this to me (which is not to say it can't happen).
Have you tried resetting the jumpers?
If that doesn't work, do you have access to a PC? If you could put the drive in a PC as a slave, you could reformat it there, then bring it back to your Mac and try Disk Utility again. I've had some success with this method in the past.
Andrew

Adobe PSE hard drive space

I am in the process of moving pictures (using Move in Windows) from my hard drive to an external hard drive. When completed there is still an image of the picture remaining in Adobe PSE which is not connected. I have not removed in from the catalog yet.
My question is, is this image a duplicate copy of the original? If not what would be the hard drive space it is taking up relative to the original?
Please note this is not my Backup, but am using the external drive to store files I seldom will be using.
Thank you
Harv

I am in the process of moving pictures (using Move in Windows) from my hard drive to an external hard drive. When completed there is still an image of the picture remaining in Adobe PSE which is not connected. I have not removed in from the catalog yet.
My question is, is this image a duplicate copy of the original? If not what would be the hard drive space it is taking up relative to the original?
You most definitely should not be using Windows to move photos that have been imported into the Organizer. This disconnects the photos. You will not be able to do anything with the photos from Organizer until you reconnect them. There are several ways to reconnect the photos. Once you fix this problem, you should only use the Organizer to move your photos from one disk to another. Use folder location view (alt-ctrl-3) to do this.
Your photos are not, and never were, in the Organizer. They exist on your hard disk, and Organizer contains a pointer to the actual photo. The photo you see in the Organizer is a small thumbnail, not your original photo, which remains on your hard disk wherever you put it. The thumbnail takes up only a very little space.

New iTunes update 10.6 consumed hard drive space

Greetings,
I recently upgraded my iTunes to version 10.6. I then synced my 2 iPads (a 16 gig model and a 64 gig model). The 16 gig model took a long time to sync (about 2 hours), but I thought that might be due to it being about 85% full. The 64 gig model sync'd in about 40 minutes. After syncing I noticed that a lot of my free hard drive space had been consumed, I had less than a gig left. I seem to remember having around 20 to 30 gig before the upgrade.
My iTunes libraries are located on an external drive.
What happend to my hard drive space? Are the iPad backups taking up additional space. Where are the iPad backups stored? How can I purge them.
Any suggestions?
Thank you,
Tim Kern

Hi Julian,
Thanks. You are correct I am a Mac (Snow Leopard) user. I'll follow the path and see if there are any bloated files.
Tahnk you,
Tim

Do Photostreams from others consume hard drive space on OSX 8 ?

I have a MacBook Pro with an SSD drive, so drive space is limited. I am running OSX 10.8.4. I have a few Photo Stream subscritions from others than I have subscribed to. One of them has about 400 photos in it. I was wonderfing if these are taking up hard drive space on my machine? Is there a way to check to see how much space it is usng up?

Thank you, that's good to know that the photos are not downloaded locally on the machine, taking up drive space. This sounds different than with my IOS devices, since I am able to see the photos even with a connection to the Internet.

How do i find out what is taking up so much space on my hard drive

Hi,
My hard drive has a capacity of 27GB abd i only have 3GB available. How can i find out what is taking up so much space?

Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd free-space-laptop.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
 Cheers, Tom

I have a MacBook Pro OS 10.9.5 with 250 GB hard drive-- I can't figure out what is taking up all my hard drive space (it is not backups). Any ideas?

MacBook Pro OS 10.9.5, 250 GB solid state hard drive.
I can't figure out what is taking up all my hard drive space (it is not backups). Any ideas?

My hard drive is nearly full but I cant find whats taking up all my hard drive space

I have an intel macbook pro with 500 internal HD.
I have 160gb of music in my itues folder with another 7gb on a previous library, I am unable to find the size info of my applications folder but I susspect it to be around 50gb, however I only have 59 gb of free HD space remaining. How to I find out what is using the remainder od my hard drive space? I have not yet checked my iphoto. where would this be? Is there someway of checking to see what folders are the bigest on my hard drive?
I can's work out why my disk is so full.
Any help greatly appreciated. :-)

MacBook Pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro

"iTunes Media" file in "Previous iTunes Library" taking up 50Gb of much-needed hard drive space. Can this be safely deleted?

Hi everyone,
My 3.5 year old 15" Macbook Pro is running out of hard drive space, so I have been trying to clean out some of the dross. I recently found that there is a file called "Previous iTunes Library" in my iTunes folder that is taking up approximately 50Gb of space. I would love to delete this folder and reclaim the space, but I am not sure what it is or where it came from, and I don't want to lose music files accidentally. Can someone tell me (1) what this folder is and (2) if I can safely delete it?
Here is a screenshot of these folders and their sizes:
Thanks for the help!

Hello facetious1212,
Take a look at this part of the article named iTunes: What are the iTunes library files? Found here http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1660.
Tip: New versions of iTunes sometimes include enhancements to the iTunes library. When you open the new version of iTunes, iTunes upgrades your existing library to the new format and places a copy of the old library in the Previous Libraries folder. If everything goes fine during your upgrade to the latest version of iTunes, you can delete the older iTunes Library files.
All the very best,
Sterling

How do I find out what's eating up my hard drive space?

I installed Leopard quite a while back on my 1,8 GHz PowerPC G5 tower. I had to try twice and call Apple support because I was having problems installing it. I never seem to have much hard drive space, and I don't really have much on this computer. My iTunes library takes up a bit of room, but there's really not much else on the hard drive. I cleaned out some old stuff tonight and made some room, but I am wondering how much of my space is eaten up by the previous OS. Also wondering if Leopard is on here twice because of the double install attempt.
I am trying to make room to install Logic Express 8. So where are the OS's on here so I can trash anything extraneous, and is there a way -- other than individually Apple I'ing everything -- to see what's taking up so much space on my hard drive. As you can probably tell, I'm not the most computer literate person. Thanks.

Try a program such as Disk Inventory X or OmniDiskSweeper.
(50778)

What is the other category on my mac book pro for hard drive space on how do I improve on it

What is the "other" category on my mac book pro for hard drive space? I found out that it is taking a whole lot of my computer's space...how do I find what it is and optimize it?

If you need to remove files for space see The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing space on your hard drive. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
Under no circumstances should you try deleting files outside of your Home folder.

What is taking up hard drive space?

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