I've deleted everything from my harddrive and it still has 219gb of "other" listed. How do I find out what's taking up all that space?

Old MacBook Pro. 250gb drive is full. I've deleted or moved all docs, picture and music to an external drive and in "About This Mac - Storage" it says I have 219gb of "other." How do I find out what "other" is and delete unnecessary files/applications/etc?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.4), 4GB 1067 Mhz DDR3

Posted on Jan 22, 2016 6:53 AM

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1 reply

Jan 22, 2016 7:25 AM in response to Fariso

First understand what OTHER actually represents


https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867


If there seems an excessive amount in the 'About This Mac' display, often a Spotlight reindex will correct it:


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


(there is a bug in the program that generates that display)


You also might download from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper and Grand Perspective (both free) and open them. They will show all of your files and the respective sizes. Transfer to an external HDD the files you do not want on your Mac or delete them.


Do not forget to empty trash. Only then is space allocated for additional data.


Ciao.

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I've deleted everything from my harddrive and it still has 219gb of "other" listed. How do I find out what's taking up all that space?

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