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What's eating all my storage?

I have a nearly full drive but everything listed in Finder (including hidden folders and files) only adds up to 115.79 GB. Where's the rest of my drive?


109.23 GB available as shown here


16.81 GB available as shown here


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Sep 5, 2021 3:14 PM

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Posted on Sep 5, 2021 3:31 PM

The most accurate free space amount is obtained from Control (right) - clicking on the drive's icon on the Desktop and selecting "Get Info" from the contextual menu. The Info pane gives the more accurate evaluation of storage used and storage free:



The amounts in the second screenshot are know to be inaccurate and misleading.


2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 5, 2021 3:31 PM in response to Stonley890

The most accurate free space amount is obtained from Control (right) - clicking on the drive's icon on the Desktop and selecting "Get Info" from the contextual menu. The Info pane gives the more accurate evaluation of storage used and storage free:



The amounts in the second screenshot are know to be inaccurate and misleading.


Sep 6, 2021 9:03 AM in response to Old Toad

Here's some other info on storage:


The files that you have control over are located in the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Movies folders.  You can use either of these two free apps, GrandPerspective  or OmniDiscSweeper, to find the largest files on your drive so you can determine if they can be deleted or moved to an external HD for storage.  


Note: you can empty the Downloads folder after the apps and/or updates that were downloaded have been installed or applied.  Many users have found a couple of Gigabytes of files in their Downloads folder which are no longer needed. 


What's eating all my storage?

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