Missing 20GB of hard drive space

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Benway1 Author

Level 1

11 points

Missing 20GB of hard drive space

Hello all .

I seem to be missing significant hard drive space , almost exactly 20GB worth.

I have a 750GB internal drive on my Macbook.

When I open finder , and look at the amount of space used on my internal drive "Macintosh HD",

[either by looking in the "size" column , or by opening a "get info" window on the root folder for the drive]

it currently says "716.04 GB used"

However , when I open this root folder , and do the addition of the sizes of the folders + files there [either on paper , or by selecting all the folders and files and doing a collective "Get info"] , the total comes to "695.8 GB"

Even when I un-hide all hidden files and folders [either by using the third party app "Houdini" or by the "chflags" command in terminal , it still says the total of files and folders within my root hard drive folder are 695.8 GB. ...

......but again , examining the root drive , I have apparently used 716.04 GB .

[My library folder has also been unhidden permanently long ago]

What is using this extra 20GB ?

Where are these files + folders located ?

Are they essential or useless junk ?
This seems a bit strange .

Any advice is appreciated .

Thanks in advance .

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)

Posted on Jun 10, 2014 8:08 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 10, 2014 8:50 PM in response to Benway1

Check, "Other" > OSX Tips The Storage Display

v10.8 Mountain Lion alone takes about 8GB's of disk space > System requirements for OS X Mountain Lion

* Do not remove any system files or folders or your Mac may not boot.

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Answer 2

Benway1 Author

Level 1

11 points

Jun 12, 2014 3:29 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

Hi Carolyn . Thanks for that . It's kind of a useful visual guide .

But in my case it's not very specific , in terms of file locations or whatever .

In my case , the image says 470.64 GB of "other" , which is a lot of "other" ! (:

.......................................

Hm... I did consider Mac OSX itself might be included in the total number , but even if so [and I would think the OS files would be included in the total when opening the hard drive folder] : subtracting approx 8gb of OS files from the 23.21 gb total I am "missing" , I would still be at about a minimum of 15.21 Gb left missing in action , give or take a gig on either side , which is a bit odd .

The below image shows how much of my internal drive is used , looking at the folder in finder .

When I OPEN this root drive folder , the below image is the contents .

I have also included a "get info" on the entire contents.

It doesn't add up to 718.98 Gb as in the image above .

It adds up to 699 Gb as of this current moment.

So going by that , I should still have 50 gb free , not 30gb .

Thanks for your help so far Carolyn . Anyone with any clues , I'd be very interested to hear .

Thanks !!!

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