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Level 1

4 points

Why does "Other" category constantly increase in size on iMac hard drive?

Hello 🙂

I am new to Macs and bought my iMac a couple of years ago. Since that time, I have not installed any programs and have all of my photos, music, and documents on an external hard drive. Whenever I use my computer, I mainly use iTunes, Safari,and DVD player, though not all at once. I also do not use the Mail app and currently have Time Machine turned off. So, for the most part, I try to keep my usage minimal and maintain it properly (i.e., installing new updates, emptying the trash, not using any anti-virus programs, etc.).

As of today, I have 485.77 GB free out of 499.25 GB on my hard drive. It might seem silly to even bring up this topic, since space is not really something I have to worry about at this time; however, I do get concerned about the constant increase of the "Other" space. As I have already mentioned, I do not have any other apps/programs installed aside from the ones that originally came with the computer, and all other categories do not change in size.

This is my first time submitting a question, and I have tried my best to search the help community for answers. Although I have come across many discussions closely related to this topic and have tried to read different websites--such as http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html--I still feel frustrated that I still don't know what's going on. 😕 Could anyone explain why this is happening with the "Other" category? Is there a way to prevent it?

I know little about computers and even less about Macs, so I would appreciate any help. 🙂 Also, I have copied down some information that might be helpful to know. Please let me know if there's anything else I can provide. Thank you!

Mac OS X

Version 10.7.5

Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core 15

Memory: 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Storage:

Audio 4.3 MB

Movies 42.3 MB

Photos 133.7 MB

Apps 2.57 GB

Backups Zero KB

Other 10.72 GB (this constantly increases)

PS. If I added more memory, would it help my situation?

Posted on Jul 10, 2014 6:04 PM

47 replies

grayneko Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 15, 2014 7:06 PM in response to thomas_r.

Thank you for the very good tip! I'm going to print our your response, because I didn't know about the Activity Monitor and Page ins and outs.

grayneko Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 15, 2014 7:17 PM in response to grayneko

Thanks again to everyone for being helpful in responding to my questions. As a newbie, I didn't know I was only allowed to mark up to two responses as helpful, because otherwise, I would've wanted to mark more.

Just in case anyone comes upon this discussion and has a similar question as mine, I want to point out the following answers that I have also found to be very helpful (I wish I could give points as well). I didn't know how else to do this, so I'm just replying to my own question.

Answers left on Page 3 proved to help me with the main topic/question at hand, in addition to the following left by thomas_r. on Page 2:

thomas_r. wrote:

I would agree with CSound, you shouldn't be worrying about this at this point. There's nothing indicative of a problem unless Other grows significantly every day, without you creating or downloading many files, and free space starts running low.

If that happens, you probably have some process that is causing a "runaway" log file - in other words, something is logging so many messages (probably errors) that your log files are getting ridiculously large. If that happens, you'll need to examine the logs in the Console and see if you can figure out what process that is. I caution you about trying to peruse the entries in the Console casually, though... there is much to see there that even a fairly knowledgeable person wouldn't understand, and people looking at the Console expecting to find trouble usually find trouble, in much the same way that children looking at shadows in the dark see the monsters that they were imagining were there.

Most likely, though, this is simply growing slowly due to things like incoming e-mails, normal log files, web caches, downloaded files, etc. Only 10 GB is nothing, and it takes very little growth to make a noticeable change.

Why does "Other" category constantly increase in size on iMac hard drive?