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84 gb hidden file in user folder...?

W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,695
4
Hey,

My startup disk ran out of hard drive space... trouble is, i don't know why.

I open up my startup disk and organize by size. My user folder shows to be 90gb (my startup disk is a raid 0 pair of ssd's). I open up that folder and organize by size, and i only see 8 gigs of folders...

... is there something hidden in that folder which is taking up 84 gigs of data? how do i find it?

thanks,
r.
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML 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 or later, space may be consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.

  • 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.
    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:
Freeing up space in Mac OS X

How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
 
S

switon

macrumors 6502a
Sep 10, 2012
636
1
RE: du...

Hi whyrichard,

I'd do a "du -h" on your user folder to see how much space is in which directory/subdirectories.

Good luck,
Switon
 
Sky Blue

Sky Blue

Guest
Jan 8, 2005
6,856
11
whyrichard said:
Hey,

My startup disk ran out of hard drive space... trouble is, i don't know why.

I open up my startup disk and organize by size. My user folder shows to be 90gb (my startup disk is a raid 0 pair of ssd's). I open up that folder and organize by size, and i only see 8 gigs of folders...

... is there something hidden in that folder which is taking up 84 gigs of data? how do i find it?

thanks,
r.
Click to expand...

Take a look in your library folder, click Finder > Go and hold down the option key. Select Library. See what's the biggest folder.
 
Small White Car

Small White Car

macrumors G4
Aug 29, 2006
10,966
1,463
Washington DC
The second poster mentioned this app within his very thorough post, but I'm going to 2nd this bit:

Get Daisy Disk (in the Mac app store). It's super useful for tracking down stuff like this. I find it easier than many other methods I've tried in the past.
 
W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,695
4
it is very strange. when i am in my user folder, my specific user is taking up 94gb. when i open the folder of my specific user the largest folder is 5 gb, then 3, then 1gb. there is a hidden file in there somewhere?

will daisy disk show the hidden file?

What is the command to see hidden files again?

thanks all for your help!

r.
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
whyrichard said:
What is the command to see hidden files again?
Click to expand...
To show hidden files in Finder, copy and paste the following command into a Terminal window, then press enter:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE && killall Finder​
To hide hidden files in Finder, copy and paste the following command into a Terminal window, then press enter:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE && killall Finder​
 
W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,695
4
Interesting....

... so being able to view my hidden files (THANK YOU!) i can see that my Library/application support/Mobile Sync folder contains backups that are 10 gigs each in the over the past two years... about 15 of them.

... how to remove these? is it safe to remove these? are these iphone backups? can I have them go to another hard drive by default?

Thanks!

r.
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
whyrichard said:
Interesting....

... so being able to view my hidden files (THANK YOU!) i can see that my Library/application support/Mobile Sync folder contains backups that are 10 gigs each in the over the past two years... about 15 of them.

... how to remove these? is it safe to remove these? are these iphone backups? can I have them go to another hard drive by default?
Click to expand...
Read the 2nd bullet point in my first post.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,132
15,595
California
whyrichard said:
Interesting....

... so being able to view my hidden files (THANK YOU!) i can see that my Library/application support/Mobile Sync folder contains backups that are 10 gigs each in the over the past two years... about 15 of them.

... how to remove these? is it safe to remove these? are these iphone backups? can I have them go to another hard drive by default?

Thanks!

r.
Click to expand...

whyrichard said:
i don't see anything in your 2nd bullet point or the link about Mobile Sync backups... (?)

mobile sync backups are ios backups of my phone and iPad, yes?

r.
Click to expand...

GGJStudios is mistaken.

Those files are local backups of your iOS devices. There will be one file for every device you have ever backed up in iTunes, so they can add up. Open iTunes and in the preferences look at the Devices tab like in my screenshot. You should see an entry there for each iOS device (even the old ones). You can figure out what to get rid of my the names/dates. Each entry on this list will correspond with one of the files in ~/Library/application support/Mobile Sync.

If for some reason they are not showing up in iTunes, just quit iTunes and delete all the files in ~/Library/application support/Mobile Sync from the Finder, then restart iTunes and make a new manual backup of iOS devices you still own.

jbidt.png
 
W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,695
4
Thanks. Thats what i thought.

r.

Weaselboy said:
GGJStudios is mistaken.

Those files are local backups of your iOS devices. There will be one file for every device you have ever backed up in iTunes, so they can add up. Open iTunes and in the preferences look at the Devices tab like in my screenshot. You should see an entry there for each iOS device (even the old ones). You can figure out what to get rid of my the names/dates. Each entry on this list will correspond with one of the files in ~/Library/application support/Mobile Sync.

If for some reason they are not showing up in iTunes, just quit iTunes and delete all the files in ~/Library/application support/Mobile Sync from the Finder, then restart iTunes and make a new manual backup of iOS devices you still own.

jbidt.png
Click to expand...
 
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