If I select "Get Info" on my iMac's HD it tells me I'm using 765GB; if I select "Manage Storage" on the same disk it tells me I'm using 899GB:
That's some difference but which is likely to be correct and why the discrepancy?
iMac 27″, macOS 13.2
andrewfrommilton keynes wrote:
Others is about 3GB although it doesn't really explain why the two values are so different.
One thought I've had since posting is perhaps the two report the size of cloud files differently: I use OneDrive and the majority of the files are only placeholders as it automatically "frees up space". If I try Get Info on one of these files it reports no space on disk but actually shows 24.9MB in Finder. Perhaps the values in Manage Storage does include these file sizes even though they take up 0MB on disk??
The eye candy graph and manage storage have been inaccurate for years.
One way to find out for sure, is to get that third opinion from OmniDiskSweeper.
Other in Manage Storage is vague. It can include things from other categories and sources.
To get a third opinion, get and run OmniDiskSweeper > https://www.omnigroup.com/more/
Only use OmniDiskSweeper to Sweep the Macintosh HD and not to delete files from it.
Others is about 3GB although it doesn't really explain why the two values are so different.
One thought I've had since posting is perhaps the two report the size of cloud files differently: I use OneDrive and the majority of the files are only placeholders as it automatically "frees up space". If I try Get Info on one of these files it reports no space on disk but actually shows 24.9MB in Finder. Perhaps the values in Manage Storage does include these file sizes even though they take up 0MB on disk??
Talk to Apple. Use the Support link this page lower left.
I really think it has to do with your Online storage, I do save things to my pCloud account, & formerly my Dropbox account, but I do it manually, no mirrored folders or such.
Can you tell if you have about 130GB actually online?
Here's my 2...
Disk Utility is a good idea. I did some shifting around yesterday and moved 169GB off the internal drive. As of this morning, the reported disk usage is:
Get Info: 750.59 on disk (1.63GB pursuable)
Manage Storage: 565.04GB
Disk Utility: 755.9GB
So yesterday, Get Info was reporting 765.38 on disk, I moved 169GB to an external drive and freed up an additional amount of small space on OneDrive with files that were unnecessarily downloaded, and now it is reporting 750.59GB. Okay......makes sense, not.
Manage Storage tells me that Applications is taking up 35.33GB; Get Info on the Applications folder is saying 52.92GB. If I log in to my wife's account, Manage Storage tells me that Applications is taking 129.86GB and Get Info on the folder is saying 51.08GB (we only have one Applications folder!)
I'm trying to get my internal drive down to well below 512GB so I don't have to pay extortionate amounts to Apple for a SSD upgrade. At this rate, I'll never know when it's achieved.
This is some BS: how is anyone supposed to work with this? Does anyone know how these values are being calculated?
I'm actually only using 11.3GB of OneDrive space.
I tried OmniDiskSweeper, with Full Disk Access granted and via terminal with sudo and it just doesn't report correctly. Terminal reports lots of permission issues so it isn't able to see anything. In fact, when it gives the drive summary it reports: 238GB free space, 1.5TB used, 1.0TB total.
There's some data on external drives, but on the internal drive everything I directly interact with is in Home folders. I'm assuming that the way MacOS secures itself now impacts programs like ODS as the permission errors were all on system files from what I could see, I didn't check particularly closely - as it was already reporting 1.5TB used, clearly incorrectly, I had little faith in what it was ultimately going to show me.
I think you may be right about the differences mystery my friend! :)
Different algorithms; different reported numbers.
I've decided to use Disk Utility as the standard. Given its purpose, it just seem natural to rely on it.
Do you know or do you think I might be right? It sounds reasonable and plausible but it would be nice to know for sure.
I don't know for certain, but it seems very likely... as you say.
Whew, what kind of permission errors?
Are you storing files outside of your Home Folder?
iMac reporting different values for used storage depending how I ask it
