Disk Space on hard drive does not add up

Hi coocooconor,

OmniDiskSweeper is showing wrong results because your user account doesn't have permission to see your wife's files, and vice versa.

Make sure that OmniDiskSweeper has Full Disk Access privileges in System Preferences -> Security and Privacy -> Privacy. Then, to get accurate folder sizes, temporarily enable the root user account, log in to that account, and run OmniDiskSweeper from there.

IMPORTANT: The root user account is the system superuser, and is too dangerous for routine use. Make sure to log out and disable the root user account when you're finished using OmniDiskSweeper.

coocooconor wrote:

My 1 TB hard drive is running low on space according to my Finder. This surprised me, so I looked into it further and found that the reported size of the contents on the drive does not add up to the amount that Finder reports is used. Further, depending on where you look, the totals are way off. Omni Disk Sweeper tells me that I've used only 320 GB worth of space. About my mac reports that nearly the full TB is used up. It also oddly attributes 620 GB of usage to "Other Users." I have no idea what that might be.

To further complicate matters, if viewing all of these same reports from my wife's profile, the numbers are all way different (the omni total is only different by a few GB, and probably b/c I ran it a few weeks apart on hers). Her finder reports a much smaller (albeit still large) Other User size. It also says my user is only ~20GB while hers is nearly 800GB. Those are almost certainly wrong. Please see screenshots, which include Omni, About My Mac, and the Finder. Thank you for any help or advice!

ME:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/7e96c00a-9060-41c7-9036-61c607fb8dec

WIFE:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/2944ec0b-eb24-4f32-b643-8794506c8982

THe graphic user interface is notoriously wrong—

If in the finder sidebar (or Desktop) if you click the Macintosh HD...Command i opens the info pane, compare your results there.

If you use Time Machine periodically, run the back up to clear out some local snapshots.

If you are still at a loss you can use the Terminal.app...

to see File size and distribution— list the items in the home folder with the sizes, including invisible items, copy & paste:

sudo du -h -d 1 ~/

to see File size and distribution—will list the items in root with the sizes, including invisible items, copy & paste:

sudo du -h -d 1 /

I have similar problem on my wife’s MacBook Pro with Monterey that sounds like yours:

I seem to recall some users reported major issues with the amount of space on their hard drives showing major use or nearly full when they were in fact not that full. Looked around for a thread on this but cannot find. Not related to memory leak issue.

I have had no problem on my late 2018 15 inch MacBook Pro but on my wife’s 13 inch 2020 MacBook Pro it says that 450 plus GB are used on her 512 GB hard drive. But only some 89 GB actually used while not seeing issues yet this seems to be a problem but not sure how to fix it either. Anyone seen a fix, or did i imagine this was a issue others have encountered.?

Ok this original post got me looking at the about this Mac report, I found the “other users” being same issue. Long story short and using memory management in my about this Mac report on the SSD I found this was an old account I had left on the base of my wife’s Mac (I had basically added her as a admin on top of me). I thought the account was mostly empty because looking at the USER for it from her page said something like a few MB but going into it and also looking at it under about this Mac I found the 300 plus GB were int it but could not see from her account. Anyway other users is just summary of other user accounts you have on your Mac from whatever account you are looking at. Mystery solved for me, although not sure whey this all showed up to me (I do the support for her on her macs the in house IT department LOL)