100GB's of missing space on Macbook Pro

[ocelittle]

So this is bizarre...

I have a 256GB SSD in my Macbook Pro. Yesterday, I had about 120GB's of free space. Today, my wife is working on some photo editing and the computer goes bonkers and I take over and it says there is no disk space left. WTF?

So I look and sure enough, it's at 1.3MB.

I delete a few things and get it up to about 15GB's and I can't for the life of me figure out what is going on.

I downloaded THREE hard drive programs to get a picture of what's going on...

For starters:

So you can see I've gotten it up to 26GB now, and the drive is in fact 256GB.

But when I loaded up these programs...

It shows that only about 100GB's of space are actually taken up...there is nothing saying I have more than 100GB-ish used up.

What is going on!?!?

I found this thread here on MacRumors...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1329717/

Seems like the guy is having the same problem, he runs verify disk in Disk Utility and it tells him to reboot in repair mode and it fixes it...I tried verifying and it worked fine...

So it's not the exact same issue.

I tried rebooting into repair mode, and it didn't do anything.

Well this is infuriating.

 

[jenzjen]

Easy fix if you have your data files on another drive, clean reinstall your OS. You'll be ruining again in 30 minutes.

 

[ocelittle]

Thanks for replying.

It may be an easy fix, but I'd rather figure out what the problem is so I can avoid it in the future. I can't just be formatting repeatedly if this just pops up randomly.

Is there a cause here?

 

[mrapplegate]

This post might help you.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1455698/

 

[duervo]

I would try having Spotlight re-index your drive. Something's not right with whatever it's reporting. It may cause your system to heat up a bit, so if you notice the fans ramp up, don't be alarmed.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409

Do the whole "ALPHA" volume.

 

[ocelittle]

I would try having Spotlight re-index your drive. Something's not right with whatever it's reporting. It may cause your system to heat up a bit, so if you notice the fans ramp up, don't be alarmed.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409

Do the whole "ALPHA" volume.

I'm doing this now, thanks.

I ran through "mrapplegate"'s link and nothing seems to help there either.

 

[ocelittle]

Re-indexed.

No dice

 

[jenzjen]

Thanks for replying.

It may be an easy fix, but I'd rather figure out what the problem is so I can avoid it in the future. I can't just be formatting repeatedly if this just pops up randomly.

Is there a cause here?

Right, but I went off what you wrote - went bonkers isn't a normal occurrence so do not imaging your needing to keep reformatting every time. If whatever bonkers means happens regularly, then that's a different story. Hope you figure it out.

 

[thekev]

Look up the terminal command for show hidden files first. I don't remember it offhand. Look at the individual folders starting from root to determine what looks excessively heavy. You can probably track it down that way.

 

[ocelittle]

Right, but I went off what you wrote - went bonkers isn't a normal occurrence so do not imaging your needing to keep reformatting every time. If whatever bonkers means happens regularly, then that's a different story. Hope you figure it out.

Re-reading my post, I sounded more aggressive than intended. I apologize.

I appreciate the help! Hopefully I can figure it out...