hidden files taking up too much space

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Level 1

1 points

hidden files taking up too much space

I've got a major disk-space problem. I only have 4GB of files, yet my 160GB hard drive is full. If I add up everything (shown) on the drive, it amount to only 65GB, which means that I have close to 95GB of hidden files!

When I try to go through the hidden files, I get errors like "you do not have permission to open this folder" and such. I cannot determine the size of a lot of the folders. If I right-click and choose Get Info, it says "calculating size" and hangs forever, never actually displaying the size.

Here's what the drive looks like:

Mac Mini, 2009, Mavericks

Mac mini (Late 2009), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on Nov 12, 2014 4:34 AM

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Answer 1

greg sahli

Level 7

25,508 points

Nov 12, 2014 5:06 AM in response to kend0g187

The hidden folders I see are all essential OS X folders. Don't mess with anything you don't know about!

Follow this procedure to locate large files:

OS X Mavericks: Increase disk space

(especially the Locate Large files part)

Many people that have large amounts of space used have Time Machine on but no external drive connected. Time machine is then creating a snapshot of every change made to your files, waiting for you to connect an external backup drive.

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Answer 2

kend0g187 Author

Level 1

1 points

Nov 12, 2014 7:11 AM in response to greg sahli

Thanks! I have already done most of what the article says. Like I said, my files are only 4GB, they are not the problem.

I didn't see anything about the time machine files that you mentioned. Where can I find those?

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Answer 3

Nov 12, 2014 7:14 AM in response to kend0g187

When you say "I have 4GB of files", what are you adding up? Are you including your personal Library folder?

Download and run OmniDiskSweeper. It will tell you what your largest files and folders are, which can help you decide what you might need to delete.

Matt

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Answer 4

kend0g187 Author

Level 1

1 points

Nov 12, 2014 7:26 AM in response to Matt Clifton

My Documents folder is 4GB. All of my pictures, videos, etc. Everything that I manually put on my computer is in that folder.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,033 points

Nov 12, 2014 9:14 AM in response to kend0g187

Try re-indexing Spotlight.

Spotlight – Re-index

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Answer 6

kend0g187 Author

Level 1

1 points

Nov 12, 2014 8:56 PM in response to kend0g187

I have tried removing Time Machine Backups with sudo tmutil disablelocal. It didn't free up any space. I have tried to locate the Time Machine backup files with no success. (I looked for /.MobileBackups, I looked in the /Volumes directory, and I did a Finder search for ".MobileBackups")

I ran OmniDiskSweeper with these results:

I am currently in the process of re-indexing spotlight.

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Answer 7

kend0g187 Author

Level 1

1 points

Nov 13, 2014 2:03 AM in response to kend0g187

So apparently I have no Time Machine backups, OmniDiskSweeper is telling me I'm only using about 60GB, and re-indexing Spotlight seems to have done nothing. Any ideas? I'm pulling my hair out at this point. Thanks.

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