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How can I find "hidden" files that are taking up over 300 gigs of space?

"Get info" shows that I have nearly 500 gigs in my Users folder, but when I add up each folder inside, it only comes to about 100 gigs. Where could these other files be hiding? My trash is completely empty and I've run Verify disk on this drive and it shows no problem.


Thanks for any help!


kt

OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Feb 12, 2016 8:08 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Feb 14, 2016 10:05 AM

Try this application.


Disk Space Filling Up – OmniDiskSweeper 10.8+

4 replies

Feb 14, 2016 10:06 AM in response to ktshastsa

As Eric Root said, OmniDiskSweeper is a good way to find where storage is being used.


There is a reasonable chance some of your storage is in your hidden Library folder: Finder -> Go -> Hold the "Option" key -> Library


If you have lots of email, especially if there are things like pictures people have sent you, that can take up a lot of space.

If you do lots of Apple Messages, again, if you receive lots of pictures, they can take a lot of space.

iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch backups are stored in your Library folder.


Back to OmniDiskSweeper, here is some advice:


When using OmniDiskSweeper, or any utility that shows all your files... See the following article if you want to run it as root

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


Boiler Plate Warnings:


If you have a recurring, running out of disk space, problem, then OmniDiskSweeper may help identify where the space is going. Posting the suspected locations and files will help the forum help you to figure it out. Remember, we cannot see into your disk, you have to give us information to work with.


DO NOT delete files in your Home Folder -> Library tree as there are things like your iPhone backups, your email messages, your application preferences, etc… If you think you have found something in your Home Folder -> Library that can be deleted, you should ask first.


DO NOT delete files outside your home folder, as you may end up deleting something essential to Mac OS X, and turn your Mac into an expensive “Door Stop”.


I will point out that you will find some very large files in private -> var -> vm (these are the Mac OS X virtual memory paging files (swapfiles) and where Mac OS X stores the copy of RAM when your Mac is put to sleep). The swapfile(s) get deleted on reboot, and the sleep image is just going to be created again when you put your Mac to sleep.


If you think you have found something to delete outside your home folder, it would be best to ask first before deleting. There are many examples of people deleting files outside their home folder, or renaming files, or changing the ownership or file permissions, and then their Mac stops running. Do not be one of those people. Ask first.

Feb 14, 2016 10:25 AM in response to ktshastsa

Hi Eric and Bob, Thank you so much for your helpful replies. I did get Omni Disk Sweeper and am seeing over 300 gigs of files in Users > ktflan > Library > Containers > com.apple.mail > Data > Library > Logs > Mail. The biggest file ends in a .txt and it's 156 gigs. There are others ranging from 74 gigs to 4 kB. I'm not sure how they got so big or if I need them or if I can delete them. However, I can see that this will likely keep accumulating and I don't have storage space for it. I've already had to move all my music, movies and pictures off this boot drive, because I was running out of space. My HD is about 640 gigs. There is over 475 gigs alone in my Users folder and less than 50 gigs of that is stuff I can see.


Any ideas what I can do next??? I did read the article about running ODS a root, but I think I'm seeing all the invisible files without doing that.


Thanks so much!


kt

Feb 14, 2016 11:49 AM in response to ktshastsa

Users > ktflan > Library > Containers > com.apple.mail > Data > Library > Logs > Mail. The biggest file ends in a .txt and it's 156 gigs. There are others ranging from 74 gigs to 4 kB.

You should not have that much in the Mail logs. For example, here is what is in my Logs -> Mail folder

16K ./2016-02-03_logs.zip

4.0K ./2016-02-09_AccountFetch.log

4.0K ./2016-02-09_AccountManager.log

24K ./2016-02-09_Library.log

4.0K ./2016-02-09_MessageFilter.log

88K ./2016-02-09_MessageRouter.log

4.0K ./2016-02-09_NetworkController.log

16K ./2016-02-09_Notifications.log

24K ./2016-02-09_POPConnection-pop.gmail.com.log

4.0K ./2016-02-09_PowerManager.log

8.0K ./2016-02-09_TableViewManager.log

16K ./2016-02-09_TerminationHandling.log


You might be able to look at them by going to

Mail -> Window -> Connection Doctor -> Show Logs

You might be able to double click on them to view them (or not). I suspect that if you double click on the .txt it will launch TextEdit and trying to load 156GB into TextEdit might wedge TextEdit or your Mac, so be prepared to Commnad-Option-Esc and force quit whatever tries to launch when double clicking on one of those huge files. And if it wedges your Mac, holding the power button for 10 seconds to force powerdown your Mac (lets hope it does not go there).


Another way to look inside the .txt files, is from an Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal session.

head -100 <drag and drop the .txt file to the Terminal session and its path will be placed on the command line>

The 'head' command with -100 should display the first 100 lines of the file, without trying to load the entire thing into memory. That should give you a clue about what is in the file.


However, I suspect you can delete them if you want.

I would make a BACKUP first, just to be safe. And Quit 'Mail' before deleting. If Mail needs the log files it will create new one when it starts again.

How can I find "hidden" files that are taking up over 300 gigs of space?

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