01-12-2013, 03:53 PM

hi, a few days ago, I noticed that the size of my startup disk was not reflected clearly in the number / size of the files that finder was counting. I'll include a picture to make this more clear, but basically, finder thinks that my disk has about 20+ gigs more files than what I am counting. Just wondering if there is any way for me to remedy this since it is annoying to turn my mac on and find that 'your startup disk is almost full' message.

as you can see from the picture above, finder is counting ~120 gigs of files, whereas time machine is only counting ~100. What's even more odd is the fact that when i count up my 4 system created folders, the total only ~90 gigs. Has anyone seen this before? / know what it means?

01-12-2013, 04:36 PM

Time machine doesn't backup temp files, sleep files etc. That's the descrepancy you're seeing.

Try using an app like Disk Inventory X to visually show your disk usage.

Either way, I'd clear one space. You could really do with maintaining about 10-20% free space for best performance

01-12-2013, 04:57 PM

disk error x doesn't work. i have osx lion. maybe this is why?

01-12-2013, 05:04 PM

ok. so i found a hidden file script here:
Show hidden files Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion - The home of Mike Hudson
and i used it to show hidden files in finder
i found out that i have a 17 gig sleep image file located in
private/var/vm
any ideas as to what this might be?

01-12-2013, 05:14 PM

You could try Grand Perspective instead.

The sleep image is just that. The storage used to dump the contents of you're working memory when your Mac sleeps. It should be roughly the size of your RAM but it can grow over time.

You can delete it from terminal with this:

sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage

It'll be recreated but not at 17gb

01-12-2013, 05:16 PM

Sweet. it worked. thanks a bunch