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What is happening to my hard drive space?

F

FranksWildYears

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 1, 2010
249
0
So, I have a 2011 iMac with a 1tb hdd.

I have, apparently, 327gb free despite Disk Inventory X & OmniDiskSweeper telling me that I've used roughly 278.3gb.

What the heck is Lion doing to my storage?! It's nothing to do with the logs, I've deleted them, it's not Mail downloading attachments infinite times (it's taking up 2.8gb and I have a LOT of email on the computer) and, so...I'm out of ideas. Going to 'About My Mac' reveals that a whopping 420gb is taken up by 'Other', which really cannot be right.

Any help would be great!
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion storage tab is about, this may help explain:
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
  • Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
  • For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.
    OS X Lion: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
  • Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
    attachment.php
  • Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
  • Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
  • Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:
 
F

FranksWildYears

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 1, 2010
249
0
Thanks,

It ended up being the recovered messages (mail) folder on my girlfriend's login. 349gb! :eek:
 
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