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Disk Utility reporting way TOO much disk space

I have an issue that's the opposite of what most people experience. Some have discovered all their "free space" has been eaten up by something invisible and no longer available. (Local time machine backups are a common culprit for that.)


My situation is the opposite. According to "About this Mac," Disk Utility and "Get Info" on my drive, I have nearly 750 GB available on my 1TB drive as seen here:


However, this is completely incorrect. What is shown here in the finder is correct:

In fact, I have well over 700 GB actually used out of 1TB. There's no way I have nearly 750 GB free!


Furthermore when examining storage from "About this Mac" it shows these values (all of which are incorrect):


For example, the above shows my documents as being 190 GB. But in the finder, my Documents folder is shown correctly at about 450 GB.


The usual advice is to have Spotlight reindex the entire drive. I've done that twice already, but to no avail. Both Disk Utility and Drive Genius cannot find anything wrong with the disk, yet they too report far too much free space. Something is obviously very wrong.


I cannot trust using my Mac in this condition. Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jun 2, 2021 10:46 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 2, 2021 1:42 PM

Try reindexing the drive for Spotlight: Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

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6 replies

Jun 2, 2021 12:15 PM in response to Old Toad

But that's a problem too. If I do a "Get Info" on my whole disk, the incorrect free space is reported. Only if I drill down to individual folders (like my users folder) are things properly reported.


The fact that Disk Utility is also improperly reporting and not reporting any problems is significant. If my disk space is being improperly tracked, that could really bite me in the future. I really need to get this fixed.

Disk Utility reporting way TOO much disk space

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