Comments on: Mac OSX: Where has my hard drive space gone?

Question: Mac OSX: Where has my hard drive space gone?

kdern — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:02:13 -0800

Mac OSX: Where has my hard drive space gone?

I have a 250 GB hard drive, with a capacity of 232 GB. 207 GB is used, 25 GB is available.

The problem is, my folders only add up to 137 GB. Where is the other 70 GB?

I've already used Disk Inventory X and it shows the same data... what's going on?

Here's what I see when I view my hard drive contents:

Applications: 6 GB
Developer: 8 KB
Library: 10.69 GB
System: 3.59 GB
Users: 116.12 GB

By: Fiat124

Fiat124 — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:20:14 -0800

You may want to try JDiskReport
It may help you hunt down your missing space. It requires Java

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:21:05 -0800

What do you get from running: df -h in Terminal?

By: plexi

plexi — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:29:20 -0800

I like WhatSize?

If you are curious about what you can't find, many of the UNIX-type directories are hidden in finder, such as /var and /usr.

You can either check them out from the terminal (do a ls -lht from / ), or un-hide them in finder.

And, for more info beyond the useful df -h, try du -sh * from a directory like Applications. Be patient, if often takes a while.

By: plexi

plexi — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:35:58 -0800

To go to them in Finder without unhiding them, from the Finder menu bar choose Go --> Go to Folder in finder and type in /usr, /var, or /etc.

By: mrbarrett.com

mrbarrett.com — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:40:06 -0800

Seconding WhatSize. I use it all the time. My first guess is that you have a rogue log file that's grown HUGE (for whatever reason; a couple hundred million lines of the same error message repeated over and over again will do that). WhatSize can help you find these. You could also us the Unix command line tool, df, to help you see what's eating your space. You could also examine your different log file locations to see what their sizes are: /Library/Logs and ~/Library/Logs.

By: mrbarrett.com

mrbarrett.com — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:41:34 -0800

Doh, not sure why that got cut off. Also check in /var/logs

By: teabag

teabag — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:49:19 -0800

I second the low level unix tools df and du... OS X could be hiding something from you.

$ df -h <- this should be all you need

By: schwa

schwa — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:00:06 -0800

WhatSize seems pretty good. But I use OmniDiskSweeper and/or GrandPerspective.

OmniDiskSweeper: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/

GrandPerspective is free and provides a nice tree graph representation of your drive:

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

By: misterbrandt

misterbrandt — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:58:57 -0800

Captian Obvious here, but: have you emptied your Trash?
I'm also a big fan of WhatSize, even though it now costs a couple bucks.

By: kdern

kdern — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:59:36 -0800

Update: I happened to be at the Apple store today and had them look at it. They ran disk utilities, restarted the computer, and the problem was corrected. I now have 90 GB of free space.

By: ShawnString

ShawnString — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:26:14 -0800

It could have also been some really big cache files that just have never been removed. Another job for Applejack

By: Gungho

Gungho — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:47:30 -0800

If the problem was corrected with Disk Utilities it could have been a corrupted directory.

By: Wild_Eep

Wild_Eep — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:01:45 -0800

I'm more of a GrandPerspective man, myself.

Common culprits are video or audio podcasts that you've forgotten about, large video projects that you've forgotten about, or directory/file corruption.

By: silentbicycle

silentbicycle — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:20:01 -0800

I see you already solved it, but for the archives...

While I'm not 100% sure this applies to OS X, I know that BSD keeps a certain amount (~5%) of space set aside to help with fragmentation (OpenBSD FAQ). That can account for some missing space.

By: KenManiac

KenManiac — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:37:41 -0800

I notice free space disappearing after a while in OS X. I try to restart every 2 months or every major update.

Just quitting your browsers can help if you normally have 50 tabs open all the time like I do.

At least log out and back in when free space gets tight. Cache files can get huge.