Help, where did my MBA 250 GB SSD disk space go?

Yes, there are two partitions as it comes from the factory. You will need to repartition the drive to recover the space or start saving stuff on the other partition. You should find the Desktop icons for three drives - two from the SSD and the Macintosh HD which is the HDD.

Apple may not have allocated the other volume on the SSD. Here's what you need to do:

Open Disk Utility and select the main entry for the SSD. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Press COMMAND-SHIFT-4 and use the crosshairs to select the portion of the screen that shows the partition layout window. Post the pic here so I can see what it looks like. Then I can give you instructions on what to do.

OK, this is helpful. From the DU info you have a 250 GB SSD that is fully partitioned and formatted as Macintosh HD. If you select the drive on the Desktop then press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window, what is reported in the upper pane for the drive's capacity, used, and available space?

Do you use Time Machine at all? If not, open TM preferences and see if TM is turned ON. TM is supposed to do snapshot backups on the startup drive when turned on but when no backup drive is connected.

As for the About This Mac display it is not very useful. Other simply refers to anything not in the other categories and may consist of data, logs ,temporary files, cache files, etc. What is relevant is only what is displayed by the Get Info report for the drive.

It would appear there is about 8.7 GBs of free space on the drive. There is also a reserved amount of space equal to the amount of RAM you have. This is used for the sleep image made when you put the computer to sleep. The Recovery HD uses about 650 MBs of space.

I would suggest you get an external drive that is at least the same size as the SSD. Clone the SSD to the external drive using Disk Utility's Restore feature:

Clone Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue button.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.

Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Then boot from the clone using OPTION boot. Use DU to erase the SSD then restore the clone to the SSD. After that erase the external drive. Copy all the data in your Home folder to the external drive and erase the same from the SSD. This will free up a considerable amount of space on the SSD giving you a bit more leeway. For OS X to run optimally you need to maintain a certain amount of free space - at least 12 GBs or 10% of the startup drive's capacity, whichever is greater.

Overall I would suggest an external drive of 1 TB. Partition it as follows:

1. 500 GBs for Time Machine backup.
2. 250 GBs for additional storage use.
3. 250 GBs for a bootable clone of the SSD.

This will allow you to put your photos, iTunes library, and movie files onto the external drive so you can remove them from the SSD to free up the space they now take up.

The MBA is not a choice for the home desktop computer. So you need to manage the space usage on the SSD. I keep just a trimmed down installation on my laptops. They are treated as the "travel" computer so I only put on them what is minimally needed for the travel. I use a 60 GB SSD but have more than enough free space for travel needs. If I need more space then I use a 500 GB HDD that has all the space I would likely need.

Then you may have snapshot backups using up space on the SSD. Try turning them off:

OS X Lion- About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs

1. Yes, when you clone you must first erase the destination so that will erase whatever is on the external drive.

2. Restoring the clone is the same process as making the clone except that the source and destinations are swapped. The external drive becomes the source and the SSD becomes the destination.

3. The idea here is to remove as much of what is in the Home folder on the SSD (except the Library folder) and keep it stored on the external drive. This will free up more space on the SSD. And, yes, you would then use the external drive to store these items.

Once the process has been completed you can check for how much free space is on the SSD. If the "lost" space is now returned then you can decide about leaving everything in your Home folder on the SSD.

I would think a 250 GB SSD should be more than adequate. I know that on mine about 30 GBs is used for the OS, applications, and support files.

Kappy, thanks for the advice you're giving here. Even helped me look at my SSD:

Thanks so much...