Disk space discrepancy

webpoet73 said:

I don't understand the discrepancy between two different views of my hard drive. (see image). In disk utility and about this mac, it shows only 322GB free, but when I do an info on the Macintosh HD, it shows 438GB free.

I do not believe that the 322GB free is correct. I have checked all of my folders and system folders and it comes very close to the 438GB free figure.

I went into the RecoveryHD mode and used Disk Utility to fix the disk and repair permissions, but that didn't help.

Image

Anybody have any clue?

Click to expand...

Time Machine keeps local snapshots on the hard drive, in the About this Mac view notice that if you add the Backups value to the amount of free space you get the amount shown as available in Finder.

This is because the space is available to you, if you start to get low on space OS X will automatically free up the space used by backups (Time Machine local snapshots) for you to use.

The Time Machine local snapshots are a useful feature which allow you to recover files using Time Machine even if you haven't recently backed up to the Time Machine drive.

For more information take a look at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US.