- Joined
- Dec 22, 2006
- Messages
- 26,561
- Reaction score
- 677
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Texas, where else?
- Your Mac's Specs
- 15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Opening up 'About This Mac' is not the place to see what you have stored on your drive. Mimicking the iOS view (iPhone, iPad) is someone's idea of a sick twisted joke and should never be used as the way to look at how space is being used on a computer's drive. Looking at the Storage tab there is good for nothing except seeing how much used vs free space you have.
"Other" is everything that is not in one of those categories, including:
the operating system and all system files
documents
email
zip
rar & tar
dmg & iso files
mkv
swap space - this could equal the amount of RAM in your machine
sleep image - this one also could equal the amount of RAM in your machine
Parallels or VM Ware & Windows, Linux, etc.
Applications - yes indeed - currently 10 GB worth of apps in my Applications folder does not register as Apps in About this Mac
Steam Games - all the applications and game data you have from Steam are included in 'Other' - 28 GB worth for 3 games on my current Mac
and a ton of "other" stuff
For those really interested in knowing what data and where that data is being stored on their drive:
WhatSize - my personal recommendation
DaisyDisk
DiskInventoryX - the free alternative
OmniDiskSweeper - another free one
Everyone should be keeping track of the used vs free space - the following are my suggested rule of thumb for hard drives - percentages listed do not really apply to SSDs.
If you have:
If you really would like to see what I think about the use of this term "Other", have a read of post # 5 in this thread.
"Other" is everything that is not in one of those categories, including:
the operating system and all system files
documents
zip
rar & tar
dmg & iso files
mkv
swap space - this could equal the amount of RAM in your machine
sleep image - this one also could equal the amount of RAM in your machine
Parallels or VM Ware & Windows, Linux, etc.
Applications - yes indeed - currently 10 GB worth of apps in my Applications folder does not register as Apps in About this Mac
Steam Games - all the applications and game data you have from Steam are included in 'Other' - 28 GB worth for 3 games on my current Mac
and a ton of "other" stuff
For those really interested in knowing what data and where that data is being stored on their drive:
WhatSize - my personal recommendation
DaisyDisk
DiskInventoryX - the free alternative
OmniDiskSweeper - another free one
Everyone should be keeping track of the used vs free space - the following are my suggested rule of thumb for hard drives - percentages listed do not really apply to SSDs.
If you have:
- more than 50% free space - you do not need a separate application unless you just want to. You can view About this Mac or open up Finder, right click on your MacIntosh HD partition and select Get Info. That will give you the totals for Disk Size, Available (free), and Used space on your drive.
- less than 40% free space - it is time for you to start paying attention to what data you are storing on the drive. It may be getting close to time for you to put a larger drive in your machine, learn to store some of your data on an external drive and at least learning what type of large bits of data you are storing on your computer.
If you really would like to see what I think about the use of this term "Other", have a read of post # 5 in this thread.
Last edited: