Q: My hard drive is full, the "other" folder is nearly 200GB.

This is due to the need to reindex the drive for Spotlight: Spotlight- How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support.

First understand what is OTHER:

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

jalysehunter wrote:

 

I need some help- A LOT of help. My "other" folder is taking up 200GB of my 318GB available. I cannot figure out how or what to delete. I have a 2TB Western Digital MyCloud external hard drive that I purchased, but whenever I try to MOVE files it only COPIES them onto the external and doesn't remove from my computer. Either way- here are my stats.

When you want to relocate a file to an external HDD you have two options:  Drag and drop the file to the external HDD and then drag the original file to trash on the internal HDD and delete trash OR when you drag the file to the new location, hold down the COMMAND key.  Then you will not have to trash the original.

Also, 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 or delete files you no longer want on your MBP.

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

Ciao.

Hi Jalysehunter:

Maybe a video would be more descriptive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH2e-9tvefE

After you have re-indexed.

Try downloading and installing OmniDiskSweeper:  OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper will sort your files by size and show you where they are located. See the following video on OmniDiskSweeper. Using OmniDiskSweeper

It will show you where your larger files are located and maybe give you an idea of what you can move to external drive.

Kim

Spotlight indexes the hard drive and, in effect, applies a tag to each file depending on what program it belongs to. That’s how the bar can show that we have 4GB of Audio Files, 6GB of photos, and so on. Anything that doesn’t get tagged with one of those specific categories will be Other. (So other is just any file that doesn’t fall into one of the specific categories.)  Unfortunately sometimes the Spotlight index become corrupt and it begins to look like Other is taking over the computer. It isn’t. What’s happening is that files that had been tagged as Photos, Audio, etc have lost their tag and appear as Other instead of what they really are. Some years ago I nearly had a heart attack because the guide showed I had no Audio but Other had doubled. That’s because somehow the index became corrupted.

Your real problem isn’t that Other is taking over the computer. Your big problem is that your hard drive is too full and you need to remove some things to another drive. The second and less important problem is that you need to re-index Spotlight. For most people the fastest and most convenient way to gain hard drive space is to move some of their media files (movies and music) to an external drive because those are the big files. Other files tend to be small - even deleting an application won’t necessarily free up much space. Many programs are small.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, please see this support article. If the display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:

          iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash

In Photos:

          File ▹ Show Recently Deleted ▹ Delete All

Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.

According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.

When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.

See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space. A common waste of space is old iTunes backups of mobile devices. As illustrated in this support article, select the Devices tab in the iTunes preferences window, select the backups you want to delete, and click Delete Backups. Keep at least one backup of each device that you still use.

You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later.

Deleting files inside a photo or iTunes library will corrupt the library. Changes to such a library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.

Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.

ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.

Back up all data now.

Install the app in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.

Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

security execute-with-privileges /A*/OmniDiskSweeper.app/*/M*/* 2>&-

Launch the built-in Terminal application in any one of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password.

The application window will open behind other open windows. When you scan a volume, the window will eventually show all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.

I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.

When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.