Where is all my space?

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Level 1

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Where is all my space?

On the storage section of "About This Mac", it says that I have 127 GB of movies on my computer. I used the "All My Files" option on the Finder, took all the movies and put them in a folder to remove them to an external hard drive, but the folder was only 10 GB.

Is there some easy way to find all 127 GB of movie files? My hard drive is obviously starting to get too full, and I bought a second external drive specifically I could store the movies separately, but I can't find an efficient way to do this?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Apr 21, 2015 5:49 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 21, 2015 6:01 AM in response to tchun005

You may try to use free disk inventory application in order to check and identify the largest files on your system.

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Answer 2

benwiggy

Level 4

1,473 points

Apr 21, 2015 6:05 AM in response to tchun005

The information in "About this Mac" is often very inaccurate. The overall total used space should be correct, but each segment might not be.

If you think you've only got 10Gb of videos (feature films are usually 1 to 2 Gb in mp4 format), then all is well. If you think you've got nearer 127 Gb, and can't find them, then use Spotlight to find them.

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Answer 3

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,305 points

Apr 21, 2015 6:09 AM in response to tchun005

Have you emptied trash?

Reindex Spotlight. That may correct the displayed information:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

Ciao.

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Answer 4

tchun005 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 21, 2015 6:12 AM in response to benwiggy

what would I look up in Spotlight, because I've tried everything.

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Answer 5

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Apr 21, 2015 6:14 AM in response to tchun005

as benwiggy says.

You know where your movies are: go to the folder in Finder, select the folder, CTL+click it and choose "getinfo" that will correctly display the size of the folder and it's contents.

Or if you have them all in iTunes:

Open Movies, Menu "select all", in the bottom bar ("status bar") the total size is displayed. When you do not have a status bar: in the iTunes Menu, select View, and then select "Show Status Bar.

Lex

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Answer 6

benwiggy

Level 4

1,473 points

Apr 21, 2015 6:43 AM in response to tchun005

The other thing you could do is to use an app like OmniDiskSweeper (free). This will sort your hard drive contents by size, allowing you to zoom in on the folder that contains the most stuff. It also gives the option to delete it, if it's not something you want.

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