Running out of HD Space - Need emergency help to find a problem

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Running out of HD Space - Need emergency help to find a problem

(7 posts) (5 voices)

Started 1 year ago by GeekyGirl
Latest reply from GeekyGirl

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GeekyGirl
Administrator

I've been running up against the wall in terms of available hard drive space for a long time now. 15 months ago I migrated from a 160 GB PC into a 250 GB MacBook Pro. I am guilty of being a data pack rat, but I know I haven't added THAT much data to my hard drive in that short amount of time.

A couple of days ago, I went through my system ruthlessly cleaning out as much stuff as I could find - deleting apps, deleting contents of the downloads folder, etc. When I was finished, I had about 32 GB of free space on the drive. Since then I've ripped several movies, which I then moved off onto a different hard drive, have saved a few bookmarks, and added text to one Pages document.

Trying to be routinely proactive, I just ran DiskDiet, only to find out that I only have 7.71 GB available. Something weird is happening on my system. Where did roughly 25 GB of free space go in two days? I downloaded very large file (less than 1 GB), but then deleted it. I also checked the downloads folder to make sure that there wasn't a copy stored there. There wasn't.

My biggest use of hard drive real estate is media. According toiTunes, I have roughly 49.28 GB of music, 402 MB of movies, 3.07 GB of TV shows, 19.30 GB of podcasts, 1.04 GB of books, 109 apps. When I right-click on the "Music" folder in the finder to "Get Info," it tells me that I have 127.8 GB of data in that folder. Does the system lump all iTunes data as "Music?"

How do I find how much space the apps are taking up? Now that iCloud is fully implemented, is there a way I can delete the apps from iTunes to free up space, since they're stored in the cloud anyway?

I know that when I moved my PC data over that I somehow created some extraneous folders, possibly containing duplicate data. –I've seen folders called things like, "I" and "J," and I have no idea what they are.

So I'm having a few problems here, the main ones being, where the heck did my 25 GB go in two days????? And why the discrepancy between what the finder says I have in music versus what iTunes says? And how do I get those apps out of iTunes (and not off the iPad) so I can free up some space.

Does anybody have ANY suggestions?

Thanks!

Posted 1 year ago #
David Spector
TMUG president

Lori I found this. I hope this helps out
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2215

Posted 1 year ago #
David Ross
Administrator

I like to use a program called Whatsize. I think it costs $10. Shows you how big everything is.

You can also use the Finder by double clicking on your boot drive to get to the bottom of all the directories and then turn on Show Folder Sizes. Cmd-J on the View menu in the Finder. Open up the bigger ones and see how big enclosing folders are. It can take a moment or two for the numbers to show up. Also clicking on the Size column so they are sorted by biggest at the top helps.

Cocktail is a shareware app that will let you clear out various caches and clean up log files and such. Free to for at least the first few runs or maybe it has a nag screen for payment.

And the easiest thing to try. Reboot the computer. If you haven't rebooted for a few days, weeks, or months, the system can create a lot of temporary things that go away during a reboot.

Posted 1 year ago #
Alan Hoyle
Member

I would suggest a couple of things:

1. Try using GrandPerspective. It's free/open source and you can use it to examine whole discs or subsections, and can color code the file types so you can visually see what's eating up your space. You can also delete files directly from the interface if you want to and know what to NOT delete.

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

2. Consider using an external drive for files that you don't need on the go.

3. If you really need everything to travel with you and don't use the DVD drive unless you're at home, you could do what I did: Replace the DVD with a secondary drive. In my MBP, I have the stock SSD for my applications/OS, and a secondary, slower, bigger drive where I store my movies, music, pictures, etc. In the rare event that I need to use the SuperDrive (e.g. to rip/burn a disc), it now lives in an external USB enclosure that came with the internal bracket.

Posted 1 year ago #
Chips
WM

Some other apps to consider when analyzing usage of your hard drive space are Supa View, Daisy Disk, DiskWave, Disk Inventory X, Disk Inspector, & Space Gremlin. Here's a link to GrandPerspective (which has just been updated) on MacUpdate that references these apps: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19515/grandperspective .

Cocktail, Onyx, & MacPilot are all good apps to help manage numerous aspects of OS X, but be cautious that you don't over-manage the system. You might need to restore or reinstall the system. And you might need to call in a Mac professional…

Posted 1 year ago #
GeekyGirl
Administrator

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

I thought of something tonight that could be part of the problem. Someone sent me a link to their extremely large Dropbox folder. I always see syncing notifications pop in the upper right corner of my computer, but I've never thought much about it, until tonight. I know that the files don't reside on my iPad, but are accessible only when I have internet access. So I assumed the same was true on my computer. But now I'm not so sure.

Does anyone know whether the files are actually on my computer or if there's only a link to the file online??

Posted 1 year ago #
GeekyGirl
Administrator

I just answered my own question as I found a syncing preference that I was not aware of, so I turned off syncing to that folder. Then I looked in my local Dropbox and the file was not there. The odd think though, is that my newly available hard drive space isn't even half of the size of that folder. So that doesn't make sense.

There are still other oddities as well. On Monday night, I had freed up 32 GB of space. Now, even with some extra space available after changing the DB preferences, I still only have 25 GB available. All these GBs aren't adding up.

Posted 1 year ago #

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