Disk Space

Logo123 said:

Folks

When I check my disk space, it shows up as 105GB of space as being filled up.

However when I look at the overall disk space, it shows me that I am using 175GB of the 250GB.
I am not sure why there is a variance.

I have used a number of apps to determine where the remaining space is being used but I cant find out.
70GB of space is quite a significant amount of space.

Can anyone help me?
What I am missing and what can I do?

Many thanks
Rahul

Click to expand...

Are you on Mavericks?

Those third party utilities to show disk usage do not seem to be working properly under Mavericks for some reason, so don't bother with them.

Enter the command below in Terminal and post up the output. It will show you the root folders and space used in GB for each folder.


You will be prompted for your password and it will take a couple minutes to run. The output will look something like this.

Logo123 said:

This is what I get. Does it make any sense?


2 /.MobileBackups
62 /.MobileBackups.trash

Click to expand...

Yep... you are on Mavericks.

Here is what is going on. You had over 60GB of data in Time Machine's (TM) local snapshots space. Then you turned off and turned back on TM and that data went to /.MobileBackups.trash where it will be deleted in a few minutes (hopefully).

So do a reboot then wait five minutes or so and rerun the command I gave you and see if the /.MobileBackups.trash is now empty. If it is, you are good to go and you should see the free space now in Finder.

If it is not, is is because there is a file or files in there that will not allow it to empty because it is in use. I had this issue when Crashplan updated their backup app in the background and the old deleted version ended up in the /.MobileBackups.trash folder and it would not delete.

If that happens to you run the command below in Terminal. That will move the /.MobileBackups.trash folder to a folder called Trashme on your Desktop. Now just drag that folder to the trash then empty your trash. If your trash won't empty (this happened with me also) DL the app TrashIT and use that to force the trash to empty. That should fix you up.


If you run OmniDisksweeper or any of these space used apps you will see under Mavericks that they do not show this space as used.

Edit: Saw your post. Notice how the Terminal command I gave you shows the space used in these two folders and OmniDiskSweeper shows zero for both folders. These space used apps are broken under Mavericks for some reason and should not be used.

Logo123 said:

Many many Thanks.

It took TrashIT to finally get the trashcan sorted out, but I finally managed to get it done. Many Thanks.

How do I ensure that it does not happen again?

I have currently Switched OFF Time Machine. If I switch it ON, I assume that I would have the same issue all over again. Any advise on how to avoid this happening again.

Thanks again
Rahul

Click to expand...

Glad this worked out for you.

Turn TM back on then run the command below in Terminal and that will turn off those local backups.


I don't quite understand why this is happening. It appears some apps like Crashplan are getting put in the local snapshots space upon delete/update like they should, but are then getting hung up in the /.MobileBackups.trash folder.

I only tracked it down because it was causing a Time Machine backup error in Console and I got curious about what it was.

DeltaMac said:

@Weaselboy
I don't have a way to test - but does OmniDiskSweeper report those folders if you are logged in to the root user? Or is it just broken in MavX?

Click to expand...

I have been thinking the same thing, but I have FV2 on and don't want to undo that to try and test. Maybe somebody else can jump in, but I believe these apps were showing the space used by /.MobileBackups before Mavs.

There is also an issue with Mavs where a Finder search even with "show system files" turned on does not find files in the main system /Library folder. I suspect Mavs changed something about folder permissions that is causing both these issues.

DeltaMac said:

@Weaselboy
I don't have a way to test - but does OmniDiskSweeper report those folders if you are logged in to the root user? Or is it just broken in MavX?

Click to expand...

Did some tinkering this morning and I got OmniDS to show everything by launching it via sudo in Terminal with the command below.


You can see here in my screenshot it is showing content in these system/hidden folders that showed zero when the app is run normally. So to be useful at all running down these missing disk space issues looks like this is the way to go with OmniDS.