Missing disk space on lion

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achen


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Macbook air 11 inch 1.8 ghz i7 processor
4bg ram
256 SSD
10.7.2

I have read a ton of posts about the missing disk space issue. Right now finder is reporting about 35gb free. However when I add up all the space used I should really only be using about 45gb and should have over 200gb free.

I have turned of local time machine sync (it wasnt taking much space).

I have cleared out all my trash bins including iphoto

I have run disk utilities and verified the disk (no repairs needed)

I have used whatsize in admin mode. It reports 40 gb used in the lower right corner. But then reports 213 gb used in the upper left corner.

Here are some weird things that happened:

I have a parallels VM that is 80 gb, it keeps expanding to large sizes because of the snapshots. If I let it get too large, there isnt enough space on the drive to delete snapshots. The solution to this is to copy the parallels VM file to an external disk to have enough space to delete the snapshots from the VM file. I deleted the snapshots and got the VM down to 80 gb which is the right size. However, when I deleted the parallels VM from my laptop hard drive, the machine hung up and I had to reboot (at this point I had 1.2gb free). I emptied the trash and it recovered up to 30 gb. I got another 5 gb back using some of the tips above. But the real issue is that Im sure that Im only using 40 gb and my disk is using 213gb. When I deleted the 115gb parallels file from my laptop I would have expected to get 115gb back, instead I only got about 30gb back.

From everything I read, whatsize in admin mode should show you ever file, system, hidden etc. Even adding up all those Im only using 40gb.

Any suggestions to get the rest of the space back?
 
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achen


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achen said:
Macbook air 11 inch 1.8 ghz i7 processor
4bg ram
256 SSD
10.7.2

I have read a ton of posts about the missing disk space issue. Right now finder is reporting about 35gb free. However when I add up all the space used I should really only be using about 45gb and should have over 200gb free.

I have turned of local time machine sync (it wasnt taking much space).

I have cleared out all my trash bins including iphoto

I have run disk utilities and verified the disk (no repairs needed)

I have used whatsize in admin mode. It reports 40 gb used in the lower right corner. But then reports 213 gb used in the upper left corner.

Here are some weird things that happened:

I have a parallels VM that is 80 gb, it keeps expanding to large sizes because of the snapshots. If I let it get too large, there isnt enough space on the drive to delete snapshots. The solution to this is to copy the parallels VM file to an external disk to have enough space to delete the snapshots from the VM file. I deleted the snapshots and got the VM down to 80 gb which is the right size. However, when I deleted the parallels VM from my laptop hard drive, the machine hung up and I had to reboot (at this point I had 1.2gb free). I emptied the trash and it recovered up to 30 gb. I got another 5 gb back using some of the tips above. But the real issue is that Im sure that Im only using 40 gb and my disk is using 213gb. When I deleted the 115gb parallels file from my laptop I would have expected to get 115gb back, instead I only got about 30gb back.

From everything I read, whatsize in admin mode should show you ever file, system, hidden etc. Even adding up all those Im only using 40gb.

Any suggestions to get the rest of the space back?
Click to expand...

Ok, I resolved this. It turns out in disk utils I was selecting the SSD itself and there were no errors on verify. Under the SSD there was the boot volume, verifying that returned errors. Repairing has actually resolved all issues.

I thought that selecting the whole SSD would mean verifying the whole SSD, but obviously not.
 
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Afrikiwi


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Related Help!

achen said:
Ok, I resolved this. It turns out in disk utils I was selecting the SSD itself and there were no errors on verify. Under the SSD there was the boot volume, verifying that returned errors. Repairing has actually resolved all issues.

I thought that selecting the whole SSD would mean verifying the whole SSD, but obviously not.
Click to expand...

Hey dude I'm a Mac novice and don't know a whole lot about computers so I didn't understand your above post however I've also been having the same problem and am running EXACTLY the same operating system version (10.7.2). My Mac is telling me that I have only 560 odd Mb free space and Im not sure why because my files add to nowhere near the hard disk space (Its a 128Gb Mid 2011 Macbook Air). Whats more is Ive been trying to format a Western Digital External HDD (2TB size) and have been having problems, anyway it tells me in the Western Digital Smartware that 78Gb (or thereabouts) of the data on my Mac is under the category of mail. I have no idea how this is as there are only 350Mb worth of emails stored on this computer. I have tried looking everywhere on my Mac and tried searching around the internet for solutions so Im really hoping you can help me out.

EDIT: I had another read of the bit I quoted and did the whole verify Macbook not SSD thing (Well I did both) and it returned with saying there were no errors and a still (almost) full Hard Disk.
 

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