Hard Drive is Full, Can't find large files...

Question

Joe1964 Author

Level 1

8 points

Hard Drive is Full, Can't find large files...

I have a Mac Book Pro 7.1. I've been getting the "start up disk is full" message recently. "Get Info" box on the Mac HD shows capacity of 249.72 GB and 249.66 GB used. Get info box on next level of sub folders shows"

Applications 3.2 GB

Library 9.4 GB

System 4.8 GB

Users 3.3 GB

I've also downloaded Omni Disk Sweeper to find large folders/files, and it shows similar results as above.

My question is: what the heck is taking up so much space? I also tried File - Find - size in the finder window to locate big files.

As a rule, nobody in the house is supposed to save music/photos to the laptop, so I was surprised to get the disk full message.

I've tried to do some 'homework' on my own, outlined above, but have not had any success. Any help would be appreciated.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Feb 9, 2013 12:29 PM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Feb 9, 2013 12:43 PM in response to helpfulperson

helpfulperson wrote:

Go to the little apple icon at the top left corner and click 'about this mac', then click 'more info', then storage and this should show you how much disk space is left.

That applies only to 10.7 or newer, the OP has 10.6.

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Answer 2

Joe1964 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 10, 2013 7:38 AM in response to Joe1964

Thanks for the replies...finally figured this out with help from:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/843403?answerId=4023806022#4023806022&messageID=4023806#4023806?messageI D=4023806

My specific issue stemmed from the kids trying to send very large movie files. The files were not sent, and then 'recovered' many hundreds of times. I found the files here in case anyone has the same issue:

/Users/../Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Recovered Messages (Gmail).mbox

I'm still not sure why I could not find these files via the 'usual' methods (ie Finder and Omni Disk Sweeper) and had to resort to Terminal commands, but problem is solved.

Thanks again.

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Answer 3

Joe1964 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 10, 2013 7:54 AM in response to Csound1

Strange...In my original post, I mentioned when I right click on the Users folder and select Get Info, it only showed 3.3GB of used disk space. However, when I used the terminal commands found in the other discussion thread, the Users folder had over 200 GB of used space.

Would be a heck of a lot easier to find these problems using Finder rather than Terminal! 🙂

Thanks.

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Answer 4

Feb 9, 2013 12:35 PM in response to Joe1964

Go to the little apple icon at the top left corner and click 'about this mac', then click 'more info', then storage and this should show you how much disk space is left.

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