Where did my hard drive space go?

Hi there!

This is my first time posting on MacForums, so please bear with me

I recently decided that I should delete some extraneous files from my mac, which has 251 available gigabytes of space (it's the SSD model), and is running 10.8.2. I'm not sure of the exact make of the laptop, but it's in the style of the new-ish aluminum unibody macbook pros, in the 13 inch size.

Anyway, I went to my Macintosh HD, which said that there are only 10 GB available. I went through all the items in the Macintosh HD folder (Applications, Library, Null, Opt, System, Users) and did the command-i thing for all of them. However, the sum total of how much space they take up is about 120 GB, or half of what my Mac said was being used.

Do any of you know why this might be? What could be using up all of that space?

Thanks so much!

rwilmer said:

...did the command-i thing for all of them.

Click to expand...

Do the "command-i thing" on the hard drive icon on the desktop. What numbers do you get?

- Nick

I wonder do you have Time Machine enabled but no external drive is attached that will kill HD space over time.

Thanks for your responses.

@pigoo3 - My Macintosh HD is showing Capacity: 240.14 GB and Available: 11.8 GB

@OSXX - I do use Time Machine, but it's set up only to work with an external drive. Sounds like it might be the issue, so I'll investigate further and make sure Time Machine is actually set up the way I want it.

Once again, thanks!

Under 10.8 if Time Machine is set up but the external drive/network drive is not available "local snapshots" are stored on the internal drive. Once an external Time Machine drive is available the local snapshots are moved off of the internal drive but the process doesn't happen immediately. These snapshot files will also be removed if the drive gets too low on available space.

One thing to kep in mind though if it is the Get Info numbers from the Finder that are showing a lack of space then something other than local snapshots is the problem. As Apple says at the end of that article

The Finder displays the available space on the disk without accounting for the local snapshots, because local snapshots will surrender their disk space if needed.

Click to expand...

Wow, that's very informative, thanks!

I'll hook up the external drive and see if that alleviates the problem, and then report back.

I plugged in the Time Machine drive, and as soon as it began to back up, it freed up around 8 GB of space. It's progress, but I don't think it's the heart of the problem.

Maybe a spotlight search for files over a certain size, say 500 MB? Just a thought.

How would one go about searching by file size as opposed to file name?

How about we do this first  > About This Mac > More Info > Storage > Now look what each item is occupying space wise and see if it adds up to the space used and it also gives available.

Alright, sure!

The usage is as such:
Available Space: 250.14 GB
Audio: 3.31 GB
Movies: 10.55 GB
Photos: 48.03 GB
Apps: 27.93 GB
Backups: 0 GB
Other: 145.99 GB
Free: 14.33 GB

Download Daisy Disk and then scan your Macintosh HD and then with this App you will be able to see what is in "other".

Its a great little App, and without Purchase, i think it holds back from some options, but you can get it in the Mac App Store if you really like it for $9.99 in the US, but there are other free Apps out there , but i like this, because if you spend the 10er you can delete stuff from within the App.

TattooedMac said:

Download Daisy Disk and then scan your Macintosh HD and then with this App you will be able to see what is in "other".

Its a great little App, and without Purchase, i think it holds back from some options, but you can get it in the Mac App Store if you really like it for $9.99 in the US, but there are other free Apps out there , but i like this, because if you spend the 10er you can delete stuff from within the App.

Click to expand...

+1 on Daisy Disk. Great app and well worth the cost. It will tell you exactly where everything is. The other could be iTunes device backups, revisions of iOS, etc.

Good luck!

Wow, that program looks really useful!
I'm downloading it now and will definitely check it out.

Thanks guys!

Here's a quick update before I go to bed:

I used daisydisk (which is really cool by the way) and found 115 GB of "Hidden Space"
When I rescanned as an admin, Daisydisk still couldn't figure out what it was. They recommended I check /volumes/, and I found something called "mobilebackups." It looked like it was connected to Time Machine, and it said that it took up 250.14 GB! Could this be the source of my problems?

Once again, thank you all so much for sticking with me.

iTunes > Preferences > Devices > select the backup/backups and delete .
Re-check your available free space if things are back to normal then sync your phone and let it back up it will only take up the used space on your phone's drive.
So if you only have the one device you should be good to go if you have several then it could re-occupy the space you freed up.

I'm sorry to have left you hanging in my weeklong hiatus from the forum!

I'm not sure what you mean by iTunes devices and my phone's drive. I haven't set up any devices with this computer other than the time machine drive.

Could you clarify what you mean?

Thanks a bunch!

rwilmer said:

Here's a quick update before I go to bed:

I used daisydisk (which is really cool by the way) and found 115 GB of "Hidden Space"
When I rescanned as an admin, Daisydisk still couldn't figure out what it was. They recommended I check /volumes/, and I found something called "mobilebackups." It looked like it was connected to Time Machine, and it said that it took up 250.14 GB! Could this be the source of my problems?

Click to expand...

A feature in ML is called Mobile Backup which acts as a TimeMachine safety net when MacBook users aren't connected to their drive, and this way you can still access them when your away from home. They are usually thinned out so they aren't that big, as they are in a way a snapshot of your TM backup.

rwilmer said:

I'm not sure what you mean by iTunes devices and my phone's drive. I haven't set up any devices with this computer other than the time machine drive.

Could you clarify what you mean?

Click to expand...

This means your iPhone HD. Depending on what size you have ie: 32GB White and the 32GB meaning your Drive size.

You might have a sleepimage file on your drive, in fact it's likely. With the newer versions of OS X, the system takes a snapshot of your ram and writes it to disk as a sleepimage file and it's the exact same size as your total RAM. If you have 8GB of RAM, then you have an 8GB sleep image file.

Whether you need it or not is depends on how critical your memory contents are when you put the system to sleep. I generally don't need it, but some people do. For example one guy I know works in medical imaging and if their system goes out they could be in trouble because they apparently use MacBook Pro's to reference stuff in surgery.

Rather than me explain it to you, I'll provide a link:

Set newer portable Macs' sleep mode | Macworld

rwilmer said:

I'm sorry to have left you hanging in my weeklong hiatus from the forum!

I'm not sure what you mean by iTunes devices and my phone's drive. I haven't set up any devices with this computer other than the time machine drive.

Could you clarify what you mean?

Thanks a bunch!

Click to expand...

All I had to go by was it listed mobile backups after you used daisy disk which led me to believe you had an iDevice of some sort backed up on your computer so do you use any other device backed up to your computer.
If you used Time Machine and transferred all info from an older Mac to a newer Mac it would also have transferred the mobile backups.