What does "other" mean in storage info

Yes, anything you no longer need can be deleted. Likely candidates are photos and videos, but also emails (especially with large attachments), and anything else you're sure you don't need.

If that doesn't gain a lot of space, see Where did my Disk Space go?

Hi,

Can anyone help me with this: (see attached picture)

I suppose there is a (preference) file to reset in order to display correctly the storage information ?

Thank you for your help.

Stan.

Most likely, the drive is either excluded from Spotlight indexing, or the index is damaged.

Go to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy. If the drive is listed there, select it and click the minus sign under the list to remove it.

If it's not listed, click the plus sign and select it. Leave it selected for a few moments, then remove it as above.

That should trigger a complete re-indexing (click the Spotlight icon at the right of the menubar -- that should show the progress of the indexing). Once that's complete, the Storage display should be correct.

Thanks !

Hi,

I did the "Spotlight Indexing", deleted some video files and pictures, but my "other" still occupies 189.6GB of my memory.

Does anybody knows how I can delete some of those files?

See Where did my Disk Space go?

I just did an "erase and install" of osx 10.8.2. Without running any updates, downloads of purchases, no adding to documents, no moving itunes songs, videos, podcasts etc, no adding pics, just a clean install and my "other" category is showing 9.2 GB. I am guessing it is either a combination of the "restore partition and OSX" or only the OSX. I hope this helps others experiencing a similar issue.

Pierre

P. Phillips wrote:

. . .

I am guessing it is either a combination of the "restore partition and OSX" or only the OSX. I hope this helps others experiencing a similar issue.

No. It's OSX itself, system work files, indexes, etc; plus your documents, preferences, settings, caches, email, etc., etc.

See The Storage Display for details.

I don't have this problem but my friend does it holds 169.90G of his 200G i want to know what the specific files are

Mega__Panda wrote:

I don't have this problem but my friend does it holds 169.90G of his 200G i want to know what the specific files are

Email, Contacts, Calendars, Spreadsheets, Documents, Data Files, OSX and it's libraries, stuff like that.

Mega__Panda wrote:

I don't have this problem but my friend does it holds 169.90G of his 200G i want to know what the specific files are

You can't get a list of what's in "other" (OSX alone is several hundred thousand items).

See The Storage Display for details, andWhere did my Disk Space go? for ways to find the big stuff there.

Thank you for that information! I have been struggling with my "other" memory for over a year and haven't had a clue and using the Omni Disk Sweeper has just made my life! It is free and so easy to use and super quick... nothing is quick my laptop. I would recommend it to anyone and I am someone that gets paranoid about downloading things onto my laptop x

If you are having trouble and need more space on your computer, delete all your browser history (chrome, safari, firefox) that should clear up about a gigabyte or so of the 'other'

I need to delete files, but what does other refer to?

As you can see most of my storage is under other. What is other and how can I delete some of it? Thanks so much for your help!

zack198 wrote:

I need to delete files, but what does other refer to?

As you can see most of my storage is under other. What is other and how can I delete some of it? Thanks so much for your help!

The answer and how to deal with it are already posted in this thread, I suggest that you read it.