Replaced my nearly full 1TBdrive with a 2TB SS drive - it rapidly filled with "other"

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Level 1

16 points

Replaced my nearly full 1TBdrive with a 2TB SS drive - it rapidly filled with "other"

Any ideas how to address this problem: I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro running 10.11.5. Several months ago I replaced its (nearly full) 1 TB drive with a new 2TB SSD drive. Within weeks it filled up (I suspect duplication for some reason of some of my data). When I check storage under "About This Mac" it indicates 1.43 TB is "other." I don't know what is filling up my drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Sep 1, 2016 2:34 PM

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Answer 1

Rysz

Level 8

44,461 points

Sep 1, 2016 2:41 PM in response to Heloderm

Force Spotlight to reindex the drive. This doesn't seem right.

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?

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Answer 2

Heloderm Author

Level 1

16 points

Sep 1, 2016 3:42 PM in response to Rysz

Thanks for the suggestion, but after doing that the ENTIRE hard drive appears as "Other." And it is still full.

Any other suggestions?

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Answer 3

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,329 points

Sep 7, 2016 7:11 AM in response to Heloderm

Download from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper and Grand Perspective (both free) and open them. They will show all of your files and the respective sizes.

https://www.omnigroup.com/more

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

Ciao.

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Answer 4

Heloderm Author

Level 1

16 points

Sep 7, 2016 7:51 AM in response to OGELTHORPE

HI - Thanks for the response. I downloaded & ran the two apps you suggested. I'm not sure what I can do with the information Grand Perspective displays - any further hints on that?

I've tried running OmniDisc Sweeper twice. Both times it hangs up after "sizing" several hundred GB. The first run got to 811GB, then made no further progress, despite running for a day and a half. I shut it down and transferred about 80GB of podcasts to a thumb drive and tried running it again. This time it has sized to 612.1. It's now been running for over 36hrs. It's been hours since it has indicated any further sizing, but according to Activity Monitor it is consistently using about 99% of my CPU.

If this provides any more useful information: after I transferred out the 80GB, "About This Mac/Storage" no longer shows the entire disc as "Other" (see my response to Rysz). Now it indicates: "Other 1.46 TB, Movies 255.67 GB, Photos 130.32 GB, Audio 87.03 GB, Apps 28.6 GB, Backups 2.6 GB; 83.53 GB free of 2.05 TB."

I really appreciate your suggestions so far, do you have any other ideas? Should I just let OmniDisc Sweeper continue to run?

Thanks again!

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Answer 5

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,329 points

Sep 7, 2016 10:45 AM in response to Heloderm

OmniDiskSweeper should not take hours to run and it should not use a lot of CPU resources when running. To me that suggests that you are dealing with some other problems.

Grand Perspective gives a visual display of the various files you have on your MBP. If you run your cursor over the diagram, the various file names will be displayed and the the size of the file. Important question, did it complete its run of all the data? If so, how much space does GP show is being taken by your data? How does it compare with the ODS results?

Have you activated TRIM on the SSD?

Did you rerun Spotlight indexing as suggested by Rysz?

Ciao.

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