300Gb in 'Other' on Hard Drive. Lost HD space?

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Level 1

1 points

300Gb in 'Other' on Hard Drive. Lost HD space?

Hi,

I spent all day looking on forums trying to fix this issue - not had much luck.

I noticed my 750HD was pretty full even though I'd emptied a load of junk of it and moved other stuff to backup drives.

After hunting the forum for answers I found that I had 200Gb of 'Backups' when I looked at About This Mac > More Info > Storage.

So after another forum hunt I found this post where you can turn these off and delete the current 'Backups'. I did this in the Termnal:

sudo mv /.MobileBackups.trash /Trashme

Which should create a Trashme file I can delete - thing is it didnt create the fil BUT when I checked the This Mac > More Info > Storage the 'Backups' had gone to zero and 'Other' had rissen about 200Gb?!?!

So Im guessing the backups are somehere in 'Other'.

So.. another fourm hunt lead me to OmniDiskSweeper which I usee in Sudo mode to look at ALL the files on my mac. They add up to 300Gb > my mac says I have only 250Gb spare on a 750Gb drive. Which lead me to this:

300Gb Used +

250 Gb spare +

200Gb backups file?

= 750Gb

I cannot for the life of me find where the backups are????!!!! or if the command line instruction did create a 'Trashme' file as I cant find it anywhere?!?!

See this screen shot of OmniDiskSweeper in Sudo mode and the About This Mac > More Info > Storage.

How can I find this 200Gb of wasted space??!?!?!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 10, 2014 4:25 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

May 10, 2014 4:06 PM in response to MarkLUK

Pondiini's The Storage Display might help.

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Answer 2

MarkLUK Author

Level 1

1 points

May 10, 2014 4:14 PM in response to baltwo

I've seen that page but nothing on there is helpful ;-( Thanks anyway!

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

May 11, 2014 2:42 PM in response to MarkLUK

Information.

Disk Space - Other

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Answer 4

MarkLUK Author

Level 1

1 points

May 12, 2014 4:30 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric, I've seen that page but doesnt really help ;-)

The 200Gb that was in 'Backups' seems to be in 'Other' but I have no way of getting rid of it.

Im thking I might just to a re-install of Mavericks and if that doesnt work I'll do a full clean intsall!!

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Answer 5

LD150

Level 10

89,673 points

May 12, 2014 12:10 PM in response to MarkLUK

Did you have Time Machine turned on but not connected? Ironically these were possibly snapshot backups and would probably have disappeared by reconnecting Time Machine, and/or turning it off.

Messing with that kind of Terminal Command may have sent the files (could be a lot of them) to somewhere they will not auto delete and you cant find them. As far as I can see it would move the files to a folder /Trashme, not a file called Trashme. Can you locate the /Trashme folder?

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Answer 6

May 12, 2014 7:34 PM in response to LD150

I use the DaisyDisk app.

http://www.daisydiskapp.com

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Answer 7

LD150

Level 10

89,673 points

May 13, 2014 1:59 AM in response to giorgiovlb

To do what?

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Answer 8

MarkLUK Author

Level 1

1 points

May 13, 2014 3:01 AM in response to LD150

Peter, yeah you right - I shouldnt have used the command line ;-)

I think It kind of did what it was supposed to do - it took the backups and put then somewhere to delete. Couldnt find that folder though so thats why im guessing they were in 'Other'

I also used DaisyDisk and that showed 200Gb in 'inaccessible files' which it cant remove even with root access.

Anyway I pretty much gave up trying to find the wasted space!

I re-installed Mavericks (not a clean install) and hey presto 300Gb space was available again - even more than I thought was initailly being wasted.

I now how local backups turned off so it doesnt happen again, personlly I amazed an OS like Mavericks can waste so much space!

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Answer 9

LD150

Level 10

89,673 points

May 13, 2014 3:15 AM in response to MarkLUK

Thanks. It's supposed to free off space used by snapshots and never use more than 80% but I guess it can get out of hand.

I tested it before I replied (like you are supposed to). My "Backups" in the About This Mac Storage was zero.

I deleted some iTunes device backups in iTunes. BackupsStorage went UP to 2.8GB

Turned off Time Machine - no change.

Connected Time Machine disk, turned on, and backed up - eventually the 2.8GB went to zero.

Moral, only have TM turned on if you are going to use it regularly.

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Answer 10

MarkLUK Author

Level 1

1 points

May 13, 2014 3:20 AM in response to LD150

Thing is for me on a 750Gb drive 300Gb is a lot of wasted space!!

I work with video so when I came to import my last raw footage I couldnt becasue the HD was full - I assumed the OS would manage the space and not actually hang on to the 300Gb instead of making it available!

Ah well its sorted now.

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