Losing GB's of HD Space

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I just learned something I didn't know about Lion. Probably because I didn't bother to read all the basic stuff about it when I installed it. Some switchers might like to know this and it might answer some questions for some others. If this has been discussed my apologies but it was a big thing for me.

Okay, after installing a Win 7 virtual machine (vmware fusion) I noticed that I lost about 40GB of disk space which is understandable since that's how big my virtual machine was. No problem. But, I later deleted the virtual win 7 to install win xp because a piece of software I needed to run would not work in win 7 and I really didn't care of have two VM windows installations. So, after deleting the win 7 virtual machine and then installing win xp vm I noticed that not only did I NOT get back any space from the win 7 deletion (yes I emptied the waste basket) I was now down 20GB more for a total of 60GB lost.

I did a little research and found that it was because Lion stores hidden backups on your machine as part of the new Time Machine in Lion. I knew that it did this, but I really never considered it before. Well, there is a way to disable this. Pull up terminal and type "sudo tmutil disablelocal" without the quotes. Then type in your password. This will rename and delete the local backups. Saved me a quick 60GB.

Peace
 

chscag

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Also, System Preferences, Time Machine. Turn Time Machine off. Does the same thing without fooling with the Terminal.

Time Machine in Lion will continue to make backups whether or not the external hard drive is attached unless you turn it off. That's the source of those hidden files.
 
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Actually my Time Machine is still turned on and working with my external drive. It's just not making local hidden backups any more, which save a ton of space on my HDD.
 

chscag

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Those "hidden" files are automatically deleted when Time Machine makes the backup they're associated with. Of course they're created again in between the next backup, and so on.

I'd rather control the backups myself which is why I keep it turned off until I'm ready to do the backup. However, that's probably not a good method for everyone especially when it's easy to forget to make the backup.
 

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