OSX Lion: Backups/Other Disk Space

No luck.

The index may be damaged. We've seen that a few times on Mountain Lion. 😟

First, try verifying your internal HD, per #6 in Using Disk Utility.

Since it's late here and I'm about to go to bed, if that says everything's ok, delete the index so OSX has to re-create it and Spotlight will re-index it. There are instructions for doing that on a Time Machine disk in the pink box of #D2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting; follow those, but for your internal HD instead.

Again, of course, it will take a while for the index to be rebuilt.

I have no idea whats going on in my late 2011 15" MBP. Last week, when I looking at my hard-drive named Mavericks, I had about 80gb in the Other category, and about 50gb in the Back-ups category. I figured out the the Back-ups were just data that would be automaticly deleted if needed, and that Other was just the files on the hard-drive that didn't fall under the other categories, hence the name Other. Well, today I wanted to double-check what type of ram is in my computer since I'm thinking of upgrading from 4 to 8gb, but I mis-clicked, and this is what I got... WHAT IS GOING ON!?

My computer specks if it makes a difference:

... WHAT IS GOING ON!?

Possibly Spotlight completed indexing and has figured out that the Other stuff was backups??

Not really genius but it might help some people. Be sure to scan as an admin when using DaisyDisk ( drop down to the right )

I am having the same problems as many other posters -- a huge amount of space is taken up by "other". Originally it was classified as "backups", until I used the Terminal command to turn off snapshots. I have tried nearly everything previous posters have recommended, to no avail. In addition to turning off snapshots, I have scanned the disk using Omni Disk Sweeper to find and delete unnecessary files and backups, secure emptied the trash can, verified and repaired disk and disk permissions, etc.

One thing that has me thrown through a loop in that I somehow unmounted or "deleted" the entire Mobile Backups folder/drive using Omni Disk Sweeper. It used to show up next to the icon for my hard drive; now it is missing. I'm not sure how to get it to reappear or if it's even necessary to bring back.

I first noticed this whole problem when I tried to backup my new iPhone, and was told I didn't have enough disk space to do so. I started deleted and moving around files in attempt to make room, but no matter how much I moved to an external drive or deleted there was never enough room. I eventually attempted to move my 47GB iPhoto library to an external hard drive, which should have made more than enough room for the backup. But even deleting that large file from my drive it didn't bring down my total space usage; instead it appears that my "other" files increased proportionally.

I have restarted my computer several times throughout the process in hopes it would clean itself out, but I'm still having the same problem.

Has anybody found any other solutions in the months and years following previous posts? I'm currently running on OS X Mavericks (10.9.5).

You should ask the person that gave you the terminal command to turn off local snapshots how to recover the space. As far as I know, disabling that setting orphans the snapshots so what was essentially free space, is now trapped.

And I have found a solution!

The problem turned out to be the hidden .mobilebackups.trash file. I turned on hidden files using TinkerTool to discover the file, then enlisted my unix-literate father to help with Terminal coding.

I'm not sure of the exact coding we used, but in followed the gist of this support thread: Re: The Mystery of Disappearing Disk Space.

I ran into the problem of my admin password not working for the commands, which I solved with this thread: SU password not working

We deleted the contents .mobilebackups.trash and freed up 63GB of "other" space. Problem solved for now. Hopefully this helps the rest of you. For those like me who are not familiar with Unix and using Terminal, you may want to recruit someone to help you if you go that path -- apparently it's pretty darn easy to screw up your system. Good luck!

in my case it was iCloud synced photos from Photostream. even though i had since turned Photostream off in iCloud preferences and my iPhoto library was being stored on an external hard drive there was over 80GB of space being taken up in my internal hard drive by old synced photos. this was on my mid-2007 mac mini running OS X 10.7 Lion, by the way. more info can be found here:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/124918/what-is-ilifeassetmanagement-and -can-i-delete-it

note: the Library folder where this data is stored is hidden by default, so you have to click on finder then select "Go" menu and type "~/Library" in the "Go to folder" dialog to get the hidden Library folder to show up. always back up your computer before deleting any files from the Library in case you delete the wrong thing(s) and/or cause corruption.