Incorrect free space in Finder (10.7.x - 10.8)

As you can see with the attached screenshot, I have a 500 GB SSD on my MBP with Retina display. But Finder says that there is 587.51 GB free. This is obviously wrong. I've read on various other forums that it has something to do with local "snapshot" backups that were introduced in Lion. I don't want to disable this (there's some terminal command that can disable that), but I want Finder to display the right amount of space. I also only have 258.13 GB used (Finder should ignore the local backups, they are not counted in this total), so you can tell that System Profiler isn't correctly adding up files itself either. I just don't know what to do. I tried reindexing on Lion, but that didn't help. At this point I just want to go to the Genius bar and see what they can do about it.

Thanks for any and all help or comments!

richard.mac said:

You could just ignore Finder's reports of the free space as it is obviously wrong, or try find a fix for it. Someone might post the fix, or you could try dragging the Finder plist from the user Preferences library folder to the desktop and relaunch Finder (drag the plist back and replace + relaunch if it doesn't work)

As for the space used, are you adding up the individual folders in Macintosh HD? As there are many hidden folders that contribute to the space as well.
You should open a Get Info window for the whole SSD or use Disk Utility to get an accurate space used reading.

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I've just been ignoring Finder, yes, but it really bugs me and it's something seemingly so basic. For the space that I had used ~250 GB, that was totaling /Users, /System, /Library, and /Applications. In Disk Utility, it says that 389 GB are used, so I guess that matches up with System Profiler. Here's a screenshot of Omni Disk Sweeper from /. I have 16 GB of RAM, so that's why /private is so big (sleepimage).

richard.mac said:

So yeah it's the local snapshots taking up that extra space, as you said. Just checking if you missed adding up hidden directories.

Not sure how to fix Finder's space used if removing it's plist and relaunching it didn't work.

Edit: found this http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878, see the note at the bottom.

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Yeah, the note at the bottom of the page makes absolutely perfect sense, and that's what I'm looking for. It's just that Finder is horrendously off. My SSD isn't even as large as what it says there is free. I'll do the plist thing or see if there's another way to reset it. Thanks!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3983143?start=0&tstart=0

This seems to have tracked it down to corrupt files in /.MobileBackups which is where the local backups are stored. They said that disabling Time machine and then rebooting fixed it, I will try that. Deleting the Finder preferences plist and lockfile didn't do anything (other than delete the settings, obviously).

richard.mac said:

Oh nice. Well that sorts it!

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It worked!!! I guess I'll just disable and reboot every so often now...