Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

startup disk is full but it isnt

I've been having this problem for a while now. My Mac will tell me my hard drive is full, but it's not anywhere near full. Everytime it has I've just deleted some stuff, emptied my trash, and deleted free space with disk utility. This usually makes the problem go away for a while but this time I did it, and I was only left with 14 GB left. I don't know how I'm filling up my hard drive without putting anything on it. I've used multiple different scanning software to see if my hard drive is really that full but each one says the same thing. I put a Screen shot of one of them(OmniDiskSweeper). The software scans hidden files and folders too, so don't just tell me that it's a hidden folder. I was looking around and someone said they had a similar issue and they found that it was a hidden volume, but I have my finder setup to see all hidden files, folders, volumes, etc. but I dont see any volumes other than Macintosh HD, Home, and Net. I looked up what Home and Net were and they're for mounting DMG files when you download something. I've done so many different things like Emptying my trash, using Disk Utility to repair disk and repair permissions, Erased free space, and I've even went through every single file on my computer manually to see if there were hidden volumes(RIP 5 hours....). Also when I look at how my hard drive's usage is divided, 463.77 GB is being used by "Other" and I cant figure out what that is. Can somebody please help?

User uploaded fileUser uploaded fileUser uploaded file

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), Late 2011

Posted on Aug 17, 2015 12:44 PM

Reply
2 replies

Aug 18, 2015 10:12 AM in response to Dysk

After reindexing Spotlight see this for an explanation & command that makes OmniDiskSweeper run as root.*

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_recover_missing_hard_drive_space


It should allow you to get a size for all the folders on Disk.

Do not delete anything when running the app as root! Look through the list of sizes & see if you have any new sizes that look incorrect.


Quit the app when you have some more figures. Post the info here.


I don't think this is local Time Machine backups, otherwise you would have a .MobileBackups folder on the disk.


* OmniDiskSweeper needs to be stored in the Applications folder to use the command.

startup disk is full but it isnt

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.