Hard Drive Too Full? Invisible Files?

AidenL · Feb 26, 2013

Hi all,

I have been battling with a problem, its driving me nutty........

As per the screenshot attached, my Hard drive is 1Tb, and Daisy Disk says it has 396 Gigs of Data on it.

Yet, my User file is only 160 Gigs approx?

Where are the rest of the files hiding and how can I clean them out before I transfer my data over to my new iMac which is on the way?

I could live without using Migration when the new machine arrives, but i do want to copy iPhoto, iTunes Music and Documents over, that's pretty much all I want to save.

Any suggestions as to how I can clean it all up ? Thanks in advance

satcomer · Feb 26, 2013

Time Machine holds a full backup and the daily backup for as long as you use it. So say if you want a file from 6 months ago you can go get it. Go through the Time Machine Dock item and then see how far back do the backups go? If it goes back far, the more data that is backed up.

AidenL · Feb 28, 2013

Thanks for that reply, but I'm really trying to free up space from the ''ghost / invisible" files on my hard drive.

Any ideas?

satcomer · Mar 1, 2013

AidenL said:
Thanks for that reply, but I'm really trying to free up space from the ''ghost / invisible" files on my hard drive.

Any ideas?

Yes. If you visit web sites a lot then in Safari go to the menu item named 'Safari' and choose to clear history and web site data (web cache). Do this about once every 2-3 months to keep web surfing cache it check.

talmy · Mar 1, 2013

Download the app "Disk Inventory X". It will show you where your drive is being used up. http://www.derlien.com/download.php?file=dix1.0universal

benthewraith · Mar 1, 2013

The rest is probably your applications.

satcomer · Mar 3, 2013

benthewraith said:
The rest is probably your applications.

Also if they save a lot of videos and music.

GGJstudios · Mar 3, 2013

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space

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 or later, space may be consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.

OS X: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
Check the System Memory tab in Activity Monitor to check page outs and swap used. If swap used is significant, restart your computer and track that value under your normal workload. If you have significant page outs under normal use, you could benefit from more RAM.
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.
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:

Freeing up space in Mac OS X

How OS X and iOS report storage capacity

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Hard Drive Too Full? Invisible Files?

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