Hard Drive Space Eaten, but where? - 10.6

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Hard Drive Space Eaten, but where? - 10.6

I can't figure out where 120 GB of Hard Drive Space has gone. I've scoured other similar threads, but none like this:

1 - 451 GB are listed as being used (in Finder/About My Mac/Whatsize/Activity Monitor/etc)

2 - outside programs, including WhatSize, list less. For example, Whatsize (which I paid for), only finds 331 GB of used space (but lists 451 GB as "used" in the upper left corner).

3 - commands like sudo du -hd1 only show me using 284 GB.

I'd like to find WHERE the 120 GB is being eaten before trying to figure out WHY. But I got into the root directory in finder anyway, and found nothing unusual.

More information - I'm using Snow Leopard, I was using Lion earlier but got tired of "Out of Memory" errors (when only 430 / 500 GB were shown, but all sources, as being used). I erased the hard drive in Disk Utility and did a clean install, last week. At that time, I was "using" 410 GB after reinstalling files- so 40 GB have gone missing just this week (I'm not doing much - No, it isn't because iTunes or iPhoto are making copies of things). I should say, overall, the system is screaming fast and working like lightning and I'm happier (compared to Lion).

And finally - the first thing that happened when I bought this laptop was that I had a logic board failure. Literally one day out of the box. So maybe this computer is a lemon. This is my first Mac too.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Mar 5, 2012 1:01 PM

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Answer 1

tjk

Level 9

51,116 points

Mar 5, 2012 1:34 PM in response to valcleo

Hi v,

Did you check SMART status (in Disk Utility)?

Did you zero the HD before reinstall?

Run Verify Disk in Disk Utility.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Mar 5, 2012 2:39 PM in response to valcleo

The discrepancy is due to HFS compression and local snapshots. The Finder, and ls(1), report the fully-expanded size of a file, while du(1) reports the compressed size; i.e., actual blocks used. To see the difference, try these commands:

ls -lh /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

du -h /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

To make things even more enjoyable, the Finder ignores local snaphsots when calculating free disk space:

“You may notice a difference in available space statistics between Disk Utility, Finder, and Get Info inspectors. This is expected and can be safely ignored. The Finder displays the available space on the disk without accounting for the local snapshots, because local snapshots will surrender their disk space if needed."

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

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Answer 3

CMCSK

Level 6

11,452 points

Mar 5, 2012 3:06 PM in response to valcleo

Where did my Disk Space go?

Slimming your hard drive

OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.

FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.

SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.

Rule of thumb: You should never let your hard drive get to where you have only 10-15% of space left.

Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Use Software Update to update your os to 10.6.8 and anything else that needs to be updated.

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Answer 4

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 5, 2012 5:26 PM in response to valcleo

valcleo wrote:

. .

2 - outside programs, including WhatSize, list less. For example, Whatsize (which I paid for), only finds 331 GB of used space (but lists 451 GB as "used" in the upper left corner).

Did you get it directly from the maker, or via the App Store? If you got it from the maker, click the "As User" padlock in the toolbar, enter your Admin password, and re-scan the drive. That will show you everything, including files for other user accounts and system files that you're not normally allowed to see.

Apple, unfortunately, won't allow that in the version they sell.

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Answer 5

valcleo Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 5, 2012 9:26 PM in response to valcleo

Good suggestions all, but I'm still not sure what I'm dealing with:

1 - WhatSize was purchased from the maker, and no, I wasn't running it in Admin mode. So I did that, but unfortunately, getting the same result.

2 - The disk is verified, and I tried repairing it (it was fine). SMART status is verifed. I did not zero the disk when I erased it though, although I did just erase and zero all of the free space, for the heck of it. So, if the not zeroing when I erased the disk for a clean install is it, what can I do to confirm and fix this?

3 - The discrepancy between the Finder and Disk Utility is minor (both show ~ 452 GB used). However, WhatSize is still only listing 331 GB. For the heck of it, I downloaded OmniDiskSweeper and it shows only 284 GB being used. I'm running Snow Leopard - is there a Time Machine / Snapshot problem? I was under the impression that there was not in this OS.

SO!

df -Ha -> 452 GB used (same as Finder/Disk Utility)

du -hd -> 284 GB used (same as Omni)

and

Whatsize -> 331 GB used.

I'd believe a compression issue, but really, my files are compressed, on average, 25-50%? For a discrepancy of 120 -> 168 GIGAbytes? I'm not really buying it. But I'm still listening if you have further suggestions on this!

Thanks!

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Answer 6

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 5, 2012 9:38 PM in response to valcleo

valcleo wrote:

Good suggestions all, but I'm still not sure what I'm dealing with:

1 - WhatSize was purchased from the maker, and no, I wasn't running it in Admin mode. So I did that, but unfortunately, getting the same result.

Did you have it re-measure once you switched modes? If not, click the orange icon.

In As Admin mode, what it shows in the sidebar should be the same as the total of the first column.

I'm running Snow Leopard - is there a Time Machine / Snapshot problem?

No, Local snapshots are only on Lion.

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Answer 7

valcleo Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 5, 2012 10:10 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:

valcleo wrote:

Good suggestions all, but I'm still not sure what I'm dealing with:

1 - WhatSize was purchased from the maker, and no, I wasn't running it in Admin mode. So I did that, but unfortunately, getting the same result.

Did you have it re-measure once you switched modes?

Apparently not! &@(@#$ .... 119 GB being used up by SPOTLIGHT? I guess that makes sense since it took days to index!

.Spotlight-V100 119GB

Off to do some homework on that one. Since I find spotlight generally useless, I'd be happy to get rid of it (or, at least I did in Lion, I haven't tried recently since I use EasyFind)

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Answer 8

valcleo Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 6, 2012 7:55 AM in response to valcleo

Thank you everyone for all of the help and suggestions. I'm summing up how I solved my problem (e.g. got my 120 GB back), which isn't the exact same thing as fixing it, in case others find this discussion useful.

I've disabled Spotlight by making my entire hard drive private, and viola, 120 GB are back! Here are the instructions for making the HD private (and reindexing):

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

I thought about reindexing, and started doing it, but the normal 26 minutes kept climbing up and up and up: an hour later it had "2 hours left". The last time I did this (since I just reinstalled Snow Leopard last week), it took a couple days (and listed stuff like "325 hours left"). Obviously, it ate 120 GB in the process, and it looked like it was going to do it again. So I'm going to live with no spotlight. Which is fine - In my experience, it doesn't work anyway (even in Lion, before my clean Snow Leopard install it couldn't find files with the exact name). So I use EasyFind, which does all of the stuff you'd think Spotlight should do, actually works, doesn't take forever, and doesn't eat my hard drive:

http://http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

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Answer 9

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 6, 2012 8:24 AM in response to valcleo

Sounds like the index is corrupted, and re-indexing doesn't fix it. You might try one more thing -- delete the .Spotlight-V100 folder entirely, then let Spotlight try again.

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