what is storage "other" and how big should it be?

Thank you for your response... I am still stumped as to why this "other" is so large since I upgraded to Lion, and why, coincidentally... my mac is now running at a snails pace. I can't help but wonder if there is a correlation, and if I have what some people are referring to as a "memory leak". My time machine backups are taking FOREVER as well.

I have hardly any other programs on this mac... the standard stuff that comes with the mac, Aperture 3, an old version of iLife and iWork, and a new version of MS office for windows (YUCK! but I need it for work)... I wouldn't think that should take up 452GB of space...

I had my hard drive partitioned, and I was running VMware fusion. I have deleted that program, and I un-partitioned my drive after I upgraded to lion, maybe there is an issue there.

Just want my speed and reliability back, it all worked so well before the upgrade.

Seems there are quite a few people posting about this, and no-one has the answer. The closest thing I have seen to a correct answer is a post about Lion creating a temporary back-up file on your internal drive that is overwritten as needed... it is not permanent. If this is the case, why isn't it in the documentation anywhere? It all seems very confusing to me, they suggest turning off Time Machine... I don't want to do that.

If my drive is only half full, I shouldn't have to clear it off, and I have re-installed the OSX already, it didn't change anything. On other posts, people say RAM is irrelevant to this issue. I think I am off to the apple store to speak to someone there. I will let you know what they say. 😕

P.S. The empty drive is to house my Aperture 3 Library, as you suggested. I have not moved it yet... I am still tagging and sorting images (sooooo slow!). I hoping Aperture puts out an update really soon so it will play nice with Lion... Otherwise it may take upwards of 24 hours to do this...

Well, I went to the Apple store in Calgary today... took a picture of my hard drive screen shot with my iPhone (rather ingenious) and showed it to them there. Their conclusion is that there is something seriously amiss with my hard drive... They said there is no way that "other" should be anywhere that big. Other consists of the operating system and software, but it should be closer to 20-30GB, not 452GB. Their conclusion is that my old partition has messed up my hard drive, and I have to take the computer in for service... So, I will be making an appointment with someone at the genius bar, and will be getting my baby fixed properly. This one I will leave to the experts!

I still have not taken my girl in to the genius bar... I am trying to better understand the contents of my hard drive before I resort to drastic measures. I have spoken to two different people at the apple store, and they are both stumped!

Do any of you shoot in RAW format? I am wondering if the orange "pictures" bar is just the jpg snapshot of each photo that is stored within the RAW metadata, and the "Other" is where the Mac is putting the RAW metadata... does that make any sense to anyone?

I downloaded an app called Daisy Disk, and it is not reading anything abnormal, however it is reading my HD as 665.1 GB which seems too small.

I had my hard drive partitioned to use parallels, but I have restored it, at least I think I have! The partitioned section was much smaller than what is reading as "other", so I don't think that is the source of my problems, at least I hope it's not, because my Mac is showing my drive as unpartitioned, so I don't know how to fix it if that is what is wrong!

The 1TB drive has ONLY copies of my photo libraries (iPhoto and Aperture), yet there is a large section of "other". This leads me to believe it has something to do with RAW data...

My best guess is that this is the "raw" portion of the photos I have taken with my Canon cameras. The "photos" (orange) section is probably just the jpeg image that is embedded in each raw file, and the remaining data from the raw file is being read as "other". When I back up just my photos onto an external hard drive, it reads in the same proportions as this drive, with a large section of yellow... The two assistants I spoke to at the apple store both thought this was likely the case as well. What we need is someone who knows the apple OS and also shoots in raw to confirm this hunch, but I don't know any apple gurus who are also photographers. All I do know is my pictures are definately eating up my storage space.😟