Hidden storage in 'Other' and 'Other Users'

A recent development has displayed my computer having only around 56/1000gb left in the 'about this mac' storage:



I have arduously tried to clear my computer of excess files but can't understand what takes up so much storage. I have tried reindexing my spotlight as suggested, but get a privacy error when dragging anything into the privacy section.


As I used the 'get info' on the folders compositing my mac. It came to a grand total of around 350gb+100 for BootCamp. This falls in line with what I know is there:


Why does my mac display so much storage in 'other' and 'other users'? How do I find and get rid of it?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jul 24, 2020 4:24 PM

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Posted on Jul 24, 2020 4:59 PM

Forget the Storage report, "Other" is everything Apple isn't sure they want on their computer. LOL


OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/


Then there's a possibility of sneakily hidden files...

Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates.

Hit enter.


Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.


Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required


http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 24, 2020 4:59 PM in response to Rajan369

Forget the Storage report, "Other" is everything Apple isn't sure they want on their computer. LOL


OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/


Then there's a possibility of sneakily hidden files...

Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates.

Hit enter.


Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.


Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required


http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html

Jul 25, 2020 5:39 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the help,


I've tried to use external software to identify the problem, but as expected I get the same results. Here is with OmniDiskSweeper:As you see, it still only displays a fraction of the amount my computer supposedly has in storage.


And as suggested I used the terminal commands, but it seems the backups are all fairly recent. After I deleted most of them this only freed up 1-2gb of storage:


I still can't understand where this 600gb of storage is and how to delete it.

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Hidden storage in 'Other' and 'Other Users'

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