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finder showing incorrect amount of free space

After the recent Mountain Lion update, my Finder now shows an incorrect amount of free space.


I have a 500GB hard drive, and I have about 150GB free.


After the update, finder says I have 478.4 GB free?


That looks like the total capacity, after you account for system software. I've done a PRAM and SCM reset, disk verification and repair, but still no joy.


Any thoughts? Is it a bug in the update?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Feb 13, 2013 7:07 AM

Reply
11 replies

Feb 13, 2013 9:51 AM in response to CanadianAuthor

Are you using Time Machine to back up your Mac to an external disk?


On OS X Lion or Mountain Lion, when you have turned on Time Machine on a MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, it creates "local snapshots" automatically > http://pondini.org/TM/30.html


Those local snapshots appears when you go to  > About this Mac > More Info > Storage, and they appear on "Backups" category. However, that space is detected as free on Finder, but Disk Utility detects them. That's why you are seeing different free space on the hard disk depending of the app you are looking

Feb 13, 2013 10:06 AM in response to mende1

mende1, yes, I am using Time Machine.


But what is reported there, also does not add up.


I have a 500GB HD


The graph reads as follows:


Macintosh HD 80.4 GB free out of 499.25


Audio: 126.97 GB Movies 28.73GB Photos 21.31 GB Apps 70.27 GB Backups 398.41 GB Other Zero KB


If I add up everything except Backups, I have 251.97 GB FREE out of 499.25 GB - which is incorrect (I have verifed with JDiskReport that I have approx 150GB, as I did yesterday)


This all makes no sense.

Feb 14, 2013 6:23 AM in response to CanadianAuthor

Here is the answer....



zchrykng



This is probably like the issue that I was having on my MacBook Pro. If you are using Time Machine on a laptop it stores the diffs in a file on your hard drive. This action can be disabled with the terminal command


sudo tmutil disablelocal


This turns the local Time Machine off. It is up to you if you want to do this, but Finder shows this space as unused since it can be overwritten when needed. It saved me over a hundred GBs of space.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)


Feb 14, 2013 7:34 AM in response to CanadianAuthor

Your answer paints an incomplete picture, but I am glad in solved your immediate problem.


I guess you have to weigh the benefits and loses here. Local snapshots can be a life saver if you need to restore an important recent item and your TimeMachine software is on but not connected. I guess it depends on how pedantic you are about monitoring your free space.


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878


http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/28/disable-time-machine-local-backups-in-mac-os-x-li on/

finder showing incorrect amount of free space

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