My Mac is telling me that I have movies taking up a lot of space but I don't have any?

Two things please: Post a picture (screen shot) of what you are referring to. Second, download from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper (free) and open it. This will display all of your files and their respective sizes.

Ciao.

margo2pld wrote:

I have 19.22 GB of movies. The strange thing is that I don't have any movies

(I use SL, not Lion, so some details may be different.)

1. In Finder, invoke Spotlight with ⌘F or ⇧⌘F.
2. If not already set, set the search target to "This Mac".
3. In the search field, type "kind:movie" (without the quotes, naturally).

Spotlight should present you with a list of movies. By clicking on each one in turn, you'll see where it is stored.

Open Finder and open the Movies folder and what does it contain? Also what is the size of the Movies folder in Finder? If size is not shown, use COMMAND 'J' which will open a small option menu and check the box next to 'Size'.

Open OmniDiskSweeper and click on 'Users' (it should be the largest file on top) and keep clicking on 'Users' (it may be your name) until you find the Movies file. Click on that file. How does that content and size compare with what is in finder?

Do the file sizes in OmniDiskSweeper correlate with those of your MBP? It has been my observation that OmniDiskSweeper produces file size statistics that are about 10% less than found on the MBP. Take that into account when you evaluate them.

Compare overall HDD usage of your HDD (by clicking on the HDD icon on your desktop with a COMMAND 'I') with the results from OmniDiskSweeper.

Ciao.

PS. For some unknown reason, your screen shot does not magnify when I click on it. That makes it difficult for me to read it. Not your fault.

Please note that there is a difference in the way Finder reports file and disc sizes since 10.6.x, and the way OmniDiskSweeper (and previous OSs) report them.

Finder and DU now report sizes as decimal, whereas ODS and previous systems report them as binary (correctly).

For instance my Users Folder in Macintosh HD is reported by Finder as 305.15GB. ODS reports it as 284.19GB.

They are in fact the same size.

If you multiply Finder's reported figures by 0.931322575, you'll see the binary sizes that ODS is reporting.

noondaywitch, greetings; Thank you ever so much for the explanation. That resolves my puzzlement why there are my afore mentioned differences (about 10% less). I never bothered to do the math. It was a 'guesstamate' of mine.

One more arrow in my quiver of knowledge. (not to suggest that there are many) Again, much appreciated.

Ciao.

Can indeed be confusing.

The HD manufacturers have used decimal notation for a long time, because it makes the drives look bigger.

Apple I think was trying to remove some of the confusion by changing the way the OS reports to correspond with the manufacturers.

Unfortunately, most third party apps still use binary, and there are lots of people still on Leopard and earlier, which have always used binary. That has caused some confusion for people upgrading to Snow Leopard who suddenly find they've 'gained' several GB of data they didn't have before.

I signed up to this forum just so I could tell you thanks! I was digging through all folders and whatnot and couldn't figure out what 3.7GB of "movies" was taking up my storage space. Got to moving a bunch of videos that I had inadvertently synced from my iPhone to iPhoto onto an external hard drive. Thanks a lot!

this was perfect. As soon as I clicked on Command J - I was able to scroll through my videos that were uploaded from my phone and iPod. Lots of them, I thought to have deleted them, but turns out that they were just deleted out of iPhoto and not off my hard drive. I went from 12 GB being free to 80 in a matter of 20 mins! Thank you!!

Thank you so much! I have had this exact problem on my mac for maybe a year and I could not figure out the problem. The OmniDiskSweeper fixed my problem and now I have way more free space. Seriously I cannot say thank you enough!

Hi,

I have the same thing except with 50GB of memory. I tried searching my files but I only have maybe five movies that are only a little over 1MB each. I only have one movie on itunes as well which is just under 4GB. I also have about 34GB in other when I have hardly any files on my Mac because I was so conscious of it slowing down if I stored too much on it as well as it being relatively new.

Help???