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50% of Hard drive filled by "Other" space in lion
- Thread starter BalaBoom
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Take a look at OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.
On a slightly unrelated note, which application are you using to gain that graphic of your hard drive space?
To get this screen, you went to About this Mac -> More information and clicked the Storage tab, right?
"Other" is just "neither media nor apps". For example your email, your VM images, all your office documents, system files such as fonts and printer drivers, etc.
Mine just shows as all 'Other', I upgraded from SL, so am presuming to get this working properly it requires a clean installation of 10.7?
Same issue for me too.
I've run into the same issue as well. Can't seem to locate the files that are taking up this "other" space. Did you have any luck identifying the problem?
I've run into the same issue as well. Can't seem to locate the files that are taking up this "other" space. Did you have any luck identifying the problem?
It just requires Spotlight to be turned on for the drive.
I don't really see the problem here. The space is occupied by something, it's just that it's not specified what exactly that something is. You can use any of the programs mentioned in the second post to find out more.
Note that whatever is counted as "Backup" here will be shown as free space in the Finder. So, in my case, Finder shows 29.3GB (20.04+9.26) as available on my main (Lion) disk.
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Solution for me
Guys,
I had the same problem. My hd was filled with the "other" files. Omnidisk did not find it, and it wasn't a cache problem. I was doing my backup to format my HD and I noticed that my trash was filled. So I clicked to empty it and boom, it found like 10 thousands files and took a while to empty. I went to the storage viewer and the "other" vanished!!!
Maybe that has something with the bug on Lion that when you try to delete a file it asks you your password.
So the "other" files for me where in the damn trash can, that's why the omnidisk wasn't finding them.
Hope I could help you!
Oh, and before, my trash can icon was showing empty, so take a good look on it.
Guys,
I had the same problem. My hd was filled with the "other" files. Omnidisk did not find it, and it wasn't a cache problem. I was doing my backup to format my HD and I noticed that my trash was filled. So I clicked to empty it and boom, it found like 10 thousands files and took a while to empty. I went to the storage viewer and the "other" vanished!!!
Maybe that has something with the bug on Lion that when you try to delete a file it asks you your password.
So the "other" files for me where in the damn trash can, that's why the omnidisk wasn't finding them.
Hope I could help you!
Oh, and before, my trash can icon was showing empty, so take a good look on it.
I bought an SSD that was smaller than my stock internal drive and saw this come up for me also. I was searching for an answer to this same question and ran into
http://toti.posterous.com/hidden-local-backups-with-mac-os-x-lion-filli
that shows if you are running Time Machine and start your Mac without being connected to the TM backup drive, your Mac will create that backup on your internet drive, taking up that "other" space.
Apparently, you can run OmniDisk Sweeper to see the files and delete them if you want to, freeing up that space./
http://toti.posterous.com/hidden-local-backups-with-mac-os-x-lion-filli
that shows if you are running Time Machine and start your Mac without being connected to the TM backup drive, your Mac will create that backup on your internet drive, taking up that "other" space.
Apparently, you can run OmniDisk Sweeper to see the files and delete them if you want to, freeing up that space./
Any other solutions? This solution quoted here only frees up space in the 'Back Up' part and not the 'other' part of the hard drive. Seems like Omni Disk Sweep is the only solution
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.
- 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
- Encrypted drive
- Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
- App filling log file
- App or file was 89GB
- Drive needed to be re-indexed
- Time Machine backup file
- Large app cache file
- Garageband files and video podcasts
- Oversized email being duplicated
- Another email issue
How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
Other people have posted this, but other is pretty much everything else that dosen't fit in the other categories. Just letting you know. 
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:
Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:
- 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.
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- 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
Freeing up space in Mac OS X
- Encrypted drive
- Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
- App filling log file
- App or file was 89GB
- Drive needed to be re-indexed
- Time Machine backup file
- Large app cache file
- Garageband files and video podcasts
- Oversized email being duplicated
- Another email issue
How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
Thanks for the hard work! My search doesn't have that + to add criteria. Any idea why? I can't limit it to 50gb without this correct?
Other people have posted this, but other is pretty much everything else that dosen't fit in the other categories. Just letting you know.
Yep, already knew that.
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http://superuser.com/questions/3138...ord-whenever-i-delete-a-file-in-my-home-direc
Solved my problem. Whenever i would delete something finder would ask for my password and the file wouldn't go to my trash. I didn't think anything of it. I started to accumulate 'other' and omnidisk couldn't find anything. I followed that post and corrected the trash back to my username and bam......all my space that i couldn't find was there in the trash that was invisible before. Deleted it all and solved the problem.
Solved my problem. Whenever i would delete something finder would ask for my password and the file wouldn't go to my trash. I didn't think anything of it. I started to accumulate 'other' and omnidisk couldn't find anything. I followed that post and corrected the trash back to my username and bam......all my space that i couldn't find was there in the trash that was invisible before. Deleted it all and solved the problem.