Is it a large .DS_store file clogging MacBook storage?

[lalalalola]

Hi guys --

I've been working to clean up an older MacBook running 10.7.4 with 2 GB internal memory and 200GB storage. I am the only user of the machine. Cleared off everything onto a newer MacBook Pro and still I see 140GB of "other" files in storage. I ran Disk Utility and found no problems. My first instinct was to completely reformat the machine, which is doable, as everything has been transferred to the newer laptop, but I would likely have trouble reinstalling CreativeSuite5. Which I would prefer to avoid.

Knowing very little UNIX, I opened Terminal and requested a dir of my user files and it seems to me that the .DS_store file is awfully large (see below) and might be related to the problem. Is there a way to build a new .DS_store without trashing the whole user profile? Aidez-moi s'il vous plait!

drwxr-xr-x+ 23 Lola staff 782 Feb 3 02:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 Mar 26 2012 ..
-rw------- 1 Lola staff 3 May 11 2008 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Lola staff 24580 Feb 3 01:26 .DS_Store
drwx------ 2 Lola staff 68 Feb 3 01:33 .Trash
-rw------- 1 Lola staff 0 Nov 17 2010 .Xauthority
drwxr-x--x 4 Lola staff 136 Mar 30 2011 .adobe
-rw------- 1 Lola staff 645 Feb 3 02:09 .bash_history
drwx------ 3 Lola staff 102 May 11 2008 .cups
drwxr-xr-x 5 Lola staff 170 Nov 17 2010 .fontconfig
drwxr-xr-x 8 Lola staff 272 Oct 25 18:11 .ievms
-rw------- 1 Lola staff 35 Feb 3 01:48 .lesshst
-rw------- 1 Lola staff 28 Feb 3 02:01 .sh_history
drwxr-xr-x 4 Lola staff 136 Mar 16 2011 Backups
drwx------+ 4 Lola staff 136 Jan 31 22:04 Desktop
drwx------+ 20 Lola staff 680 Feb 3 01:26 Documents
drwx------+ 23 Lola staff 782 Feb 1 16:33 Downloads
drwx------@ 66 Lola staff 2244 Oct 25 18:09 Library
drwx------+ 7 Lola staff 238 Feb 1 00:55 Movies
drwx------+ 6 Lola staff 204 Dec 13 2009 Music
drwx------+ 8 Lola staff 272 Jan 14 14:13 Pictures
drwx-----x+ 6 Lola staff 204 Aug 6 2010 Public
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 Lola staff 204 May 25 2009 Sites

[xdissent]

Originally Posted by lalalalola

drwxr-xr-x 8 Lola staff 272 Oct 25 18:11 .ievms

That could be the culprit. If you're still using the ievms VMs in Virtualbox, you can delete any non-essential files by running:

find ~/.ievms -not -wholename "*vhd*" -delete

If you're no longer using ievms at all, it's safe to remove the whole folder:

rm -rf ~/.ievms