Unaccounted for Hard Drive Space

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I just did some quick adding and all my folders (applications, movies, music and photos) combined amount to about 78GB of Hard Drive space. Now, I have a 120GB drive in my MBP and it's telling me I only have 11GB of free space left. So I have ±32GB of unaccounted for space. I'm planning on going out soon to pickup an external drive to store all my media on, but I'm just curious if I can find out where that mysterious chunk of space went and if I can free it up. Any ideas? Thanks fellas!
 
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First of all, 120GB isn't really 120GB. 1 Mb = 1,024 bytes. Get the idea?

Otherwise, d/l a program called "What Size". It sizes everything on your computer so you can see exactly where all your space is disappearing to.
 
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Download a program called Disk Inventory X to see where all your space is allocated.
 
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Or just view your hard disk in List view, and check the "Calculate all sizes" box in the View Options window.
 
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First of all, 120GB isn't really 120GB. 1 Mb = 1,024 bytes. Get the idea?

Otherwise, d/l a program called "What Size". It sizes everything on your computer so you can see exactly where all your space is disappearing to.

Yeah I know in all actuality I have about 111GB of space to use, that's what I used in my math to figure I have about 32GB missing space. Thanks I'll check out that program.

Download a program called Disk Inventory X to see where all your space is allocated.

Or just view your hard disk in List view, and check the "Calculate all sizes" box in the View Options window.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check 'em all out! :)
 
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I've responded to this kind of thing before.

My guess is OS X is reporting your drive capacity at about 111.75GB instead of nearly 120GB. Use Disk Utility in the Utiltities folder to look at it.

You have accounted for 78GB + 11GB free space to equal only 89GB, so you are missing the counting of about 22GB. That seems like a lot given the OS doesn't take that much space. By the way, which version of OS X are you using and have you emptied the trash? Do you have some fancy professional video or audio editing application installed, or third party extensions to iMovie or Garage Band.

I suspect you haven't counted everything. It would be very abnormal for the system to not report back the correct numbers.
 
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32 gig is the size of a Parallels partition... do you have XP installed on you unit?
 
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32 gig is the size of a Parallels partition... do you have XP installed on you unit?

Not for everyone. Mine is only a few gigs, I think somewhere around six.
 
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I've responded to this kind of thing before.

My guess is OS X is reporting your drive capacity at about 111.75GB instead of nearly 120GB. Use Disk Utility in the Utiltities folder to look at it.

You have accounted for 78GB + 11GB free space to equal only 89GB, so you are missing the counting of about 22GB. That seems like a lot given the OS doesn't take that much space. By the way, which version of OS X are you using and have you emptied the trash? Do you have some fancy professional video or audio editing application installed, or third party extensions to iMovie or Garage Band.

I suspect you haven't counted everything. It would be very abnormal for the system to not report back the correct numbers.

I added up the sizes of all the folders and subtracted the total from the 111GB of total space estimated by the computer. And I'd assume it's reasonably accurate since Apple makes a point of noting on their site that the actual formatted space of their drives is less then advertised for their machines. And I have not yet installed FCP on my MacBook Pro. So no, I'm not running any Pro software yet, and I've been running Leopard on it since I bought it in November. My trash is emptied, I ran Cocktail and had it empty all of my system, user and internet caches etc etc. I managed to free up about 8 gigs so now I'm in the neighborhood of about 20 but I feel like I should have 40-50 free.

32 gig is the size of a Parallels partition... do you have XP installed on you unit?

Nope, no partitions here. 100% Mac baby.
 
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Open Terminal. At the command prompt type the following:
sudo du -d 1 -c -k -h

That will include a bunch of hidden stuff that the Finder doesn't see without a customization.

I recommend disconnecting any external drives as those are also counted. If you do not, then substract the /Volumes sum from the grand total that appears at the bottom. In my case 622GB - 478GB = 144GB used with only 4GB remaining. There is a rounding error in this case by .52GB. And yes, I really only have 4GB remaining on my internal drive.
 

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