Storage Display Issue: Displays amount as "EB"?

sovanbu wrote:

I have 313GB of backups. Why? I backup using Time Machine to an "external" drive. Why would it be on my actual internal HD? How can I investiage this.

These areTime Machine local snapshots. Even though your disk is not connected TM is creating backups.

Try OmniDisksweeper for a better idea of exactly what the size of your files are

It's either a strange bug in System Information or somehow the Data Structures on the disk gave been corrupted.

Try running Disk Utility - Verify Disk to see if it detects anything

Does the info in this thread help?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4129912?tstart=0

sovanbu wrote:

1st of all you'll notice for movies it says "EB" What in the world could cause this?

EB stands for Exabyte. Read this Wikipedia article for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte.

I just seen the image you posted, I am not sure if my answer applies to this as I haven't seen that before.

I am unable to help you with your other question/s

Looking at the screenshot in your original post, I don't see Movies actually appearing in the bar chart. The other categories appear and seem to be in the right proportions. The bars in the bar chart appear in the same Left to Right order as the labels that appear below the bar chart. I see nothing between Audio and Photos in the bar chart representing Movies.

The About this Mac - Storage display is based on counting file size by type. Rather than, say, looking at files in ~/Movies and adding up just those files.

Also I noticed something else:

Add up all the categories excluding Movies, but including the Free Space it comes up to something like 806.82GB on a 749.3GB drive???

When I add up all the parts on my system it comes out to the total disk drive capacity within .01 GB i.e. rounding.

So something is very fishy about the display.

I suspect the display not the disk, but it would nice to be sure.

I know of no simply way to verify any of the numbers in the display.

You might try something like GrandPerspective (a handy tool in any case) which will show you what's using the space on your disk.

I suspect that System Information is getting confused.

Heck, it can't make anything add up ....your 750GB disk's capacity is over 800GB plus the 18EB of movies?????

You're probably all right, but if you're not already maintaining regular backups - start now.

Lets first with you last question: iPhone backups are saved in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ not in your iTunes Library.

Now regarding a setting up a new Mac.

I would be sure to have a good backup of your current system/

I would make a bootable backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!

It would be interesting to boot such a backup on your current machine and see if the Movies are still reported in EB.

This might not tell anything decisive if they are still reported in EB, but if they are not then you now that your system is fine and you have, in essence, escaped some anomaly in the structure of your current boot disk.

If you have the storage I'd also have a Time Machine backup.

On getting a new Mac I would use Setup Assistant when you first boot it and if you have a time machine backup I'd use that as the source. See: Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its Backups, or a PC

While you still have your old Mac, you can test the resulting migrated system to see if it is working OK.

If not then you can revert to manually copying your stuff.

That's what I'd do, but others would say take the "bare" system that comes with the new Mac and manually copy/install just wjhat you need and leave all the old, unused cruft on the old system/ This assumes of course that you no which is which.

You will need to wait until one of the more experienced forum members is able to answer this as I haven't seen this before.