Mac OS X 10.8.2 Shows wrong available disk space

I've also confirmed this trick works for OS 10.9 Mavericks

Nosferius wrote:

I've also confirmed this trick works for OS 10.9 Mavericks

Please note what I said about this "trick" back in February:

That's because that deletes your local snapshots. So, really, you're compromising your backup system in order to make two numbers that really don't matter that much agree with each other. That doesn't make much sense.

Hi Thomas,

In my case it concerned a mac that was imaged using a default image we have here and was for some reason giving the issue as shown in the original post. The mac was not back-upped yet nor did it need one so I could do this without thinking 🙂 but of course I would think twice when I'd have this issue on a mac with a lot of user data on it 🙂

Of course if someone has a resolution for this problem that uses a different method I'd love to hear it.

Nosferius wrote:

Of course if someone has a resolution for this problem that uses a different method I'd love to hear it.

You're still thinking about it wrong. As has already been said, this is not a "problem," it's simply a difference in how different programs report free disk space. There is no "solution," per se, except to be aware of the difference and why it exists.

If you are ever in a situation where you need to keep track of every megabyte of disk space, you probably need a larger disk. We are long past the days when you could reliably expect to know exactly how much free space there is.

Thomas_r,

I understand what you are saying, and I read the link to describe local snapshots.

I have same problem with Disk Utility and finder not matching up, but they don't mach up by more than 250 GB. What prompted this was tech tool gave me a warning for less than 10% disk space, but I have close to 30% actually available... I went to Disk utility to see what was up and it failed verification, so I ran repair from a recovery startup.... it failed. I switched off the time machine, and back on, restarted into recovery and repaired, success.

So the question is, based on your warning, why wouldn't I want to delete the local snapshots if they are causing a problem, especially when I have proper backups on two time capsules?

snacks wrote:

So the question is, based on your warning, why wouldn't I want to delete the local snapshots if they are causing a problem, especially when I have proper backups on two time capsules?

What you just described is entirely different from wiping the local snapshots just to make two meaningless numbers match up.

However, I'd warn you that what you observed may be the result of the initial stages of disk failure, and really had nothing to do with the local snapshots except for the fact that removing those files made it possible for Disk Utility to repair, because the corrupted parts of the disk happened to involve the local snapshot files. Fortunately, it sounds like you already have two backups... but you may want to consider making a third, using a different backup tool (like Carbon Copy Cloner), just to be on the safe side.

Toggle time machine fixed the problem, THANK YOU

Still the right answer - Time Machine on/off. Wish I started here 🙂

I just updated to 10.10.3, and updated XCode on my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

The finder status bar showed 703TB; about this Mac shows the "real" 500 GB hard drive size, but the "703TB backups fill the display bar.

I toggled Time Machine, and the finder windows now show 240GB free...

The app store shows the iTunes 12.1.2 update and the OS X Updates, but not the XCode update.... weird.

But only after doing a restart while time machine was turned off.

Now I seem to have a PetaByte Hard Drive... who knew?

I had exactly the same issue with my MacBook Air. I turned the Time Machine OFF, restarted and turned on the Time Machine again.

This fixed it.

OK: after turning off time machine, and a restart, disk space display's back to normal. Was fun having a 2 Petabyte HD for a while, tho 😁

The only issue is that this does not seem to be a permanent solution, after a while my "PetaByte" drive reappeared and I had to apply the same fix again. Let's hope the guys at Apple have this sorted in the next update.

Phil 1960 wrote:

The only issue is that this does not seem to be a permanent solution, after a while my "PetaByte" drive reappeared and I had to apply the same fix again. Let's hope the guys at Apple have this sorted in the next update.

They won't, because it's not a problem, as has been pointed out several times earlier in this topic.

Anyone here who is having an actual problem, such as crashes, slow performance, messages about insufficient free space, etc, needs to start their own topic. Describe the problem. Whatever those problems are, they are not the result of a completely normal discrepancy between the Finder and the Storage display accessed through About This Mac.

Those who are simply worrying over the discrepancy, I say again that it is completely normal. Compromising your computer's backups is a very poor solution to something that is not a problem.