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Sorcerer2006 Author

Level 1

32 points

Disk Space Disappearing

I have a MacBook Pro as follows:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)

2.7 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

I have 500GB of SSD and El Capitan just installed about one week ago. I have the latest update to 10.11.

My storage looks like the above showing 95.34 GB free. But my disk space looks like this...

Showing usage of 267.62 GB which should leave me with over 220 GB free.

My storage has been steadily reducing itself every day - several days ago I was at 180 GB free and today I'm at 95 GB free. None of the folders I have show any increase in storage. I have used Disk Wave to look more closely at my files and looked at invisible files but cannot find any that would account for this issue.

I have rebuilt my disk using disk utility first aid and Cocktail. All current versions. I have reset using the old ZAP PRAM routine.

Anyone have any insight into this issue?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 20, 2015 1:04 AM

Best reply

bigschwabbel

Level 3

804 points

Posted on Oct 20, 2015 2:04 AM

Storage information from "About This Mac" is often not correct, because it depends on Spotlight, which is not very precise in this regard.

Open a new Finder window, right-click your Macintosh HD -> Get Info and look for "Available". That's just to make sure you have the right figures.

View in context

44 replies

Sorcerer2006 Author

Level 1

32 points

Oct 21, 2015 1:06 PM in response to R C-R

I'm going to stick to my original problem statement as follows:

"My storage has been steadily reducing itself every day - several days ago I was at 180 GB free and today I'm at 95 GB free. None of the folders I have show any increase in storage. I have used Disk Wave to look more closely at my files and looked at invisible files but cannot find any that would account for this issue."

I haven't reported any problems with applications or crashing, or any other issues save this one issue.

I have stated that my problem with this condition is that I am missing at least 130GB of storage - not a few GBs or even the size of the system folder in the range of 8GB, but 130GB not accounted for.

I cannot use that space and it appears to be reduced without any involvement from me.

I have removed 10GB from movies and my available space has not changed at all.

As a user I consider that to be a problem.

You have taken me on a "cerebral safari" presenting information about "private files" etc. and now you have resorted to suggesting I want to change the OS and sending me to a developer site. I think you need to step back and look at what you've done to my post.

I'm not going to be OK with 130GB disappearing to OTHER. If that's your basic position then I guess we're done for now. But remember that OTHER has been increasing on my MBP. As I give it more space it takes it. So I don't really have an option. I need to understand why this isn't a problem worth finding a solution because to all appearances it's going to continue to get worse and soon I will be where my son's MBP is with less than 5% available space and 350GB of OTHER that he cannot identify.

At no time in this conversation did I suggest that I should be able to control system files or storage. I am very clear that as a user I manage only my files and storage. And I purchased 500GB and I have a reasonable expectation of being able to use it for my storage after system, applications, etc. I don't believe that I have suggested anything different in any of my posts. You have led us down that path much to my regret and wasted my time with all your rhetoric about how magical and mysterious the OS is.

I appreciate the suggestions for potential fixes along the way - clearly you thought there might be something to fix or you wouldn't have suggested that I run those solutions. So if you have nothing more, it's clear you don't believe I have a problem.

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Oct 21, 2015 2:14 PM in response to Sorcerer2006

1. I have not suggested that you should change the OS, only that if you want to see everything stored on your drive that is what you would have to do.

2. Files are not "disappearing" into Other. It is just a broad category of all files that are not in one of the others in the display. That includes both user & system files. Most of those files you can see in Finder or with third party tools, some you cannot.

3. By design, the OS will store things on the drive temporarily, as long as there is enough space for that. When there is not, it automatically removes them. If the drive becomes so full that it interferes with the normal operation of the system, the OS will warn you about that.

4. If you want to determine if what you are seeing by probing around in the normally hidden parts of the OS is actually a problem or not, you will have to digest a considerable amount of information about how the OS works "under the hood" that most users have little interest in. I have suggested what I believe to be a very good source for that kind of info, but it is up to you to decide what, if anything, you want to learn about that.

5. OS X is neither magical nor mystical but it is extremely complex. By design, it hides most of its complexity from end users. I have suggested nothing more than that.

f104club

Level 1

4 points

Oct 22, 2015 5:56 AM in response to R C-R

I have a 2013 Mac Pro & since I upgraded to 10.11 I have had 70 GB of swap files appearing and disappearing on a regular basis. I believe this could be part of the problem going on here.

Leopardus

Level 4

1,303 points

Oct 22, 2015 7:00 AM in response to Leopardus

Leopardus wrote:

Hi Sorcerer,

You can use SupaView to give you a graphical overview of what is on your HD. After it has displayed the total HD graphically you can see what exactly uses which space. Clicking on it will give you the detail thereof.

It is compatible with both Yosemite and El Capitan.

Have fun

Leo

You can remove all the doubt and see what is using your space. You might have missed this.

Leo

f104club

Level 1

4 points

Oct 22, 2015 7:31 AM in response to Sorcerer2006

Hi Sorcerer,

I had a daily occurrence after upgrading my Mac Pro to El Cap. of watching my hard drive capacity fill up till

the machine was unresponsive and I would have to reboot. I eliminated 70 GB's off the machine and could watch as 50+ GB's would disappear

the machine slowed down and then after 50 minutes the storage would come back. I ran Daisy Disk and found 50 GB in the

"private" folder, and then in the var folder, the vm folder with 50 "swapfile" of 1.1 GB. There was a big problem in 2012

with Swapfiles which are meant to be temp storage and not to be deleted. I watched as 48 files disappeared and my storage came back.

I don't know why this is happening or what to do about it but I'm under deadline so will ignore until next week.

You might check and see if the same thing is happening.

Sorcerer2006 Author

Level 1

32 points

Oct 22, 2015 8:42 AM in response to f104club

OK I went through this with Apple support and did all of the things that have been listed by everyone with no success.

Lastly I rebuilt the OSX from the recovery drive and that didn't work.

Now I just finished wiping the disk, building a new OSX, and using migration assistant to restore all my files from Time Machine. and it appears this has fixed the problem although we have to wait for a day or two to see if the available storage starts to disappear again. Here is my current picture.

When I started I had gotten down to 92GB available and it was still going down. I had removed 10GB of movies only to have Other increase that exact amount and take away the space. So now I have picked up over 130GB that weren't there before - you can look back at my posts earlier in this message stream.

Now Apple had me delete a lot of files manually that were temp and cache files in the system, but that didn't work. I also uses Cocktail which is very good at removing temporary or cached files from the system but that didn't work. So I was never able to get rid of the files you mentioned although I have not tried Daisy Disk but I gave earlier a list of all the disk utilities I used but none of them would show me any files in that /private/var area so I never got the opportunity to delete them.

Replacing the entire drive is the most drastic measure on my list and I'm still not certain about the outcome - restoring from time capsule is an overnight process at best so it takes 8-10 hours even when you have a gigabit wireless. Not the easiest solution but certainly the "final" solution.

If this comes back, then I'm going to say we have a bug in how El Capitan handles files. If it does not, then I'll say that there is a problem with existing file structures when upgrading to 10.11.

Luxpiro

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2015 11:37 AM in response to R C-R

I have a similar problem, but I found that the Mail application is the one getting all the HD space available, until it crashes the system.

Mail App keeps downloading the 27,000+ emails

I've tried many different things from different post in the Mail App, but nothing works, I have just decided to stop using Mail and start using webmail for my email accounts, unfortunately this is slow compared to Mail App when you search for an specific email or attachment.

No running Mail, No problem, but it's not a final solution.

lizzyfc

Level 1

0 points

Dec 7, 2015 3:35 PM in response to Sorcerer2006

Thank you for patiently taking us through the issues you were having. All of this sounds so eerily familiar to me I've also begun searching for a solution to what sounds like the same problem you had.

I am a designer who manages large print files (packaging, etc) on my MacBook. A few weeks ago I noticed I was nearing half my HD space, so I began to manually backup projects onto an external. I had the exact same problem you did... removing files did not clear up HD space. In the meantime I am now down to only 50G free and have 290G of "Other" because I think my attempt to clean up HD space has made this problem worse. The only thing I have done in addition is to turn off time capsule AND wipe local backups through a command window. That took my "Other" space down from 336G to 290G but strangely didn't free up any more room.

I got to the point this afternoon where I can no longer expand large zip files and I am out of HD space. I have done nearly every step you attempted in October to try and fix this but I'm afraid my next step is wiping my HD.

Has anyone developed any additional solutions since October?

lizzyfc

Level 1

0 points

Dec 7, 2015 3:42 PM in response to lizzyfc

For anyone else experiencing this disappearing HD space issue... I finally found the solution!

/.MobileBackups.trash

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/44877/gigabytes-of-disk-space-shown-as- hidden-space-in-daisydisk/218614#218614

eljonco

Level 1

41 points

May 13, 2016 11:41 PM in response to Leopardus

Chiming in with a 'me too', 10.10.5 256 GB SSD retina MBP.

Done all of the above with respect to detecting what file causes the trouble.

Erasing the disk and restoring indeed reclaims the lost space.

After a few months, this repeats. Twice already.

Genius bar etc. seems to think that erasing and restoring is the only solution.

SupaView scans almost half the disk (half!) and shows all in there properly.

The other part, visually more than half of the SSD is, after a long period of increasing progress bar that gets stuck half way, shown as 'Unscanned space'. After the progress bar has gone, the Unscanned space remains at 126.6 GB. TRIM is enabled.

Disk utility, when booted from another volume, doesn't find any problem.

When a (bootable) backup is made with Carbon Copy Cloner, the 'Other' apparently is not copied.

DaisyDisk recognises 136 GB 'hidden space' out of 244.6 GB SSD.

Scanning the disk using DaisyDisk as Administrator shows a folder .DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStorage of 128 GB

See this or this page for more info. Executing the commands in the latter link releases another 126 GB

8-)

eljonco

Level 1

41 points

May 14, 2016 12:04 AM in response to eljonco

Too late for an edit, I would like to add this link too.

Jul 19, 2016 9:47 AM in response to Sorcerer2006

Has anyone found a solution to this?

It definitely looks like a bug in El Capitan...

I've been a mac user for many many years and am now having this problem as well.

I have moved literally EVERYTHING I can possibly move to an external hd, but my local hd space is steadily disappearing. I'm quite savvy when it comes to computers and have done every possible solution proposed by the internet to no avail.

Apple needs to get on this bug quick because it will soon make this computer unusable.

Jul 19, 2016 10:55 AM in response to HB Woodrose

My 'about this mac' storage screenshot:

This is a serious problem...

Jul 20, 2016 5:30 AM in response to Sorcerer2006

HEY I FOUND THE ANSWER!!!!

It's apples new versioning system. If you have any apps using that, it will eat up all your harddrive space. I just free'd up over 150 gigs!

Check out this article:

https://goo.gl/G4lKYK

And the solution from the comments here:

https://goo.gl/38T2iw

Would be nice if apple would make this more obvious and even nicer if they would allow us to set the versioning location to an external drive. However, as long as you use dropbox or something like that you dont need the versioning system anyway.

Extra bonus: That data also takes up space from your iOS devices since its all linked to icloud. After fixing this, back up your iphone to itunes, erase all its content and settings, then restore. Youll see more space on your device 🙂

Here's what my storage looks like now 😀

Disk Space Disappearing