ehmjay

Q: Lost almost 35 GB, Grand Perspective shows that as "Misc Files"

So I woke up this morning and discovered my Mac had seemingly lost almost 35 GB overnight. Yesterday I was floating around 656GB and now I'm at 613. I couldn't fathom what had happened; I checked with Grand Perspective and everything appeared normal. Then I clicked "show entire volume" and it listed almost 35 GB (pretty much the exact size that seems to have gone missing) as "miscellaneous files".

 

How do I get this space back? I tried running "CleanMyMac" but that didn't help. I tried rebooting (which usually gets me back some arrant runaway space) but that didn't help. My Time Machine backup appears to be up to date so I don't think it's that either.

 

Any ideas?

OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), 2.6 GHz Core i7, 16GB Ram, 1TB SSD

Posted on Sep 4, 2015 6:00 AM

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Q: Lost almost 35 GB, Grand Perspective shows that as "Misc Files"

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  • by greg sahli,

    greg sahli greg sahli Sep 4, 2015 6:14 AM in response to ehmjay
    Level 7 (25,395 points)
    Sep 4, 2015 6:14 AM in response to ehmjay

    Still think it might be Time Machine. Is it a laptop (and you sometimes disconnect from the backup drive)? Go through this:

    About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

     

    CleanMyMac is dangerous - it sometimes deletes essential files - I'd uninstall it. And don't bother with other "fix-your-Mac" products!

  • by ehmjay,

    ehmjay ehmjay Sep 4, 2015 6:25 AM in response to greg sahli
    Level 1 (37 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 4, 2015 6:25 AM in response to greg sahli

    It is a Laptop and I have a Time Capsule for wireless backups...

     

    There's also a very large (5+ GB) file in lost + found but I heard those should be ignored...

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Sep 4, 2015 6:29 AM in response to ehmjay
    Level 6 (10,477 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 4, 2015 6:29 AM in response to ehmjay

    Never use apps like CleanMyMac or MacKeeper and the like. They are capable of doing so much harm that you have to format the disk and install everything anew.

    Does GrandPerspective give the address where these 35GB are: post that address here.

  • by ehmjay,

    ehmjay ehmjay Sep 4, 2015 6:31 AM in response to Lexiepex
    Level 1 (37 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 4, 2015 6:31 AM in response to Lexiepex

    Sadly, no...

     

    Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 9.31.02 AM.png

  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Sep 4, 2015 6:35 AM in response to ehmjay
    Level 6 (19,410 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 4, 2015 6:35 AM in response to ehmjay

    There's also a very large (5+ GB) file in lost + found but I heard those should be ignored...

    You should boot from the recovery partition, and run Disk Utility -> Verify (or even Repair).  Then again it was most likely Disk Utility Repair that put the file in lost+found.

     

    A file in lost+found is a file that was found during Disk Utility Repair that did not have a directory entry pointing to it.  Normally this should not happen (even abnormally it should not happen; that is why metadata journaling is used by HFS+).  Anyway, the file was found and since the name only exists in directory, and there is no directory entry, the file is given a numeric name based on its internal inode number.

     

    Anyway, chances are you an delete it.  You will need admin privilege to delete it.

     

    And then follow the link has given you about Time Machine snapshots that are collected when your Mac cannot access the Time Capsule.

    About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

     

    If that does not work for you, then see this article on running OmniDiskSweeper as 'root' so you can find "Everything" on your storage.

    OmniDiskSweeper (free download)

    <http://www.omnigroup.com/more>

    When using OmniDiskSweeper, or any utility that shows all your files...  See the following article if you want to run it as root

    <http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_recover_missing_hard_drive_space>

     

    Chances are the tricks suggested by MacObserver can be used to invoke GrandPerspective as a root user as well, if you prefer GrandPerspective.

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Sep 4, 2015 6:44 AM in response to ehmjay
    Level 6 (10,477 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 4, 2015 6:44 AM in response to ehmjay

    Try OmniDiskSweeper instead of GrandPerspective.

    As long as you do not know what those files they are, you should not attempt to delete them.

    If they are TimeMachine so-called "local snapshots" (as greg sahli thinks), they do not hurt, and they will be used and deleted when you connect the TimeMachine backup disk. They also disappear when space gets scarce. There is a Terminal command to not do these local snapshots. You have to set that again however after each OSX update.

    On a SSD it is better to disable these local snapshots, as Garbage Collection has to do extra work after these snapshots are deleted.

    The Terminal command is (copy/paste):

    sudo tmutil disablelocal

    Lex


  • by ehmjay,

    ehmjay ehmjay Sep 9, 2015 5:35 PM in response to Lexiepex
    Level 1 (37 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 9, 2015 5:35 PM in response to Lexiepex

    Well I don't know if turning off the snapshots did it or what, but the problem seemed to have fixed itself.

     

    Thanks guys.

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Sep 10, 2015 1:28 AM in response to ehmjay
    Level 6 (10,477 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 10, 2015 1:28 AM in response to ehmjay

    That can well be local snapshots. These files disappear automatically after switching off local snapshots.

    Great, have fun.

    Lex