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Storage -- I can't find the files that are supposedly taking up space on my laptop

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caariinaa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 28, 2015
3
0
Hey guys

I'm having some trouble dealing with the storage on my MacBook Air.

Under "Storage" it says that 26GB is taken up by "Movies". I have no files in the "Movies" folder, I've deleted all the videos in iPhoto, and I went on "All My Files" and ordered it by Kind and there's no video files there either.

Does anybody know how I can fix this?
 

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The-Pro

macrumors 65816
Dec 2, 2010
1,453
40
Germany
Download "DiskInventory X". It will scan your drive and make a list, showing biggest files at the top, use the arrows to open the file paths down to the single files. That way you can find the files eating up your storage space.
Right click on the file to open the file location, it will then show the file in the finder from where you can view it and delete it etc.

Refrain from deleting files which you dont know what they are. You dont want to accidentally delete system files.


Also, when you delete files, make sure you empty the trash afterwards, you wont regain your storage space until the trash is emptied.
 
C

caariinaa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 28, 2015
3
0
The-Pro said:
Download "DiskInventory X". It will scan your drive and make a list, showing biggest files at the top, use the arrows to open the file paths down to the single files. That way you can find the files eating up your storage space.
Right click on the file to open the file location, it will then show the file in the finder from where you can view it and delete it etc.

Refrain from deleting files which you dont know what they are. You dont want to accidentally delete system files.


Also, when you delete files, make sure you empty the trash afterwards, you wont regain your storage space until the trash is emptied.
Click to expand...

I emptied the trash (both the iPhoto and regular) and that cleared up some space, I have 32GB available now. Everything that is taking up my storage is now filed under "Other" for some reason.

I downloaded "DiskInventoryX", but I'm not sure what some of these things mean, and whether I can delete them. Could you tell me what I can delete from here? I see what's taking up most of the space is Mail. Is there an option to automatically delete older emails from the Mail app, without deleting them from my online Gmail account?

Here's a screenshot.



glenthompson said:
When you deleted the videos in iphoto, did you empty the iphoto trash? It is separate from the regular trash can.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize they were separate, thank you!
 

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T

The-Pro

macrumors 65816
Dec 2, 2010
1,453
40
Germany
caariinaa said:
I emptied the trash (both the iPhoto and regular) and that cleared up some space, I have 32GB available now. Everything that is taking up my storage is now filed under "Other" for some reason.

I downloaded "DiskInventoryX", but I'm not sure what some of these things mean, and whether I can delete them. Could you tell me what I can delete from here? I see what's taking up most of the space is Mail. Is there an option to automatically delete older emails from the Mail app, without deleting them from my online Gmail account?

Here's a screenshot.

I didn't realize they were separate, thank you!
Click to expand...

you could go into your mail and delete your old emails, especially the ones that have attachments in them as they take up most space. You probably have the attachments in your documents anyway.
If you want to keep the old messages you can delete them from your mac but keep them on the mail server. To do this make sure the option is ticked at the bottom under Preferences / Accounts / "Email Account" / mailbox behaviours.
Then choose for how long you want to keep the emails on the mail server.
 
C

caariinaa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 28, 2015
3
0
The-Pro said:
you could go into your mail and delete your old emails, especially the ones that have attachments in them as they take up most space. You probably have the attachments in your documents anyway.
Click to expand...

I deleted all my old e-mails but Mail keeps bringing them back. I went through the settings and I don't see anything about permanently deleting emails off the Mail app.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
T

The-Pro

macrumors 65816
Dec 2, 2010
1,453
40
Germany
caariinaa said:
I deleted all my old e-mails but Mail keeps bringing them back. I went through the settings and I don't see anything about permanently deleting emails off the Mail app.
Click to expand...

strange,
if you are certain you no longer need the emails then tick the option to delete the emails from the server aswell. That way it cant bring them back
 
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