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FileVault size bigger than disk size

Hello All,

MacBook Pro on 10.6.4

When logged into teh filevault account and I do get info on the encrypted home image/folder it says
capacity 999.53 GB
Available 326.14 GB
Used 673.39 GB

Yet my hard disk is only 500GB in size.

When i logout and then log in from another admin account when I sudo into root and do a "du -sh" I get the sparsebundle size as 109 GB

I want the readings while logged into the filevault account to reflect the real usage and free space

Kiggs

MacBook Pro 2.66Ghz intel core i7, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jul 20, 2010 11:41 PM

Reply
2 replies

Jul 21, 2010 8:46 AM in response to kiggs

Welcome to Apple Discussions,

Apple's implementation of the FileVault sparsebundle's image apparently results in this peculiar observation - See this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2227841

The apparent volume size of a mounted sparsebundle image is a "potential" size, which can be much larger than the current HD space occupied by the sparsebundle (hence the "sparse" in the name). Apparently the potential volume capacity of the mounted image can even be set larger than the HD itself, though it could obviously never be filled to that capacity by files because the sparsebundle could not grow large enough to hold them. What is also unusual in FileVault is that apparently a large fraction of the image capacity gets marked as "used" even before any files have been added to it, as described in the link above.

I guess the bottom line is that when you GetInfo directly on a FileVault Home (which is the mounted image), the "capacity" will be a number twice the size of the HD, the "available" number is probably accurate, and the "used" number is not meaningful because it reflects more than just the contained files.

If do want to see the size of the contained files, you could open a Finder window into the FileVault Home (showing the Documents, Music, Pictures folders, etc), and then type Command-A followed by Command-option-I. You will get an "Inspector" window which should show the total space used by the files, excluding the Trash.

FileVault size bigger than disk size

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