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205 gig (!!) of 'hidden space' on 2012 iMac?

H

H.Finch

Cancelled
Original poster
Jun 9, 2013
150
76
Hi all,

Quick question: I checked my disc space usage this morning and came to the stunning conclusion that my iMac (late 2012, 1 tb fusion drive) has 205 gigs of ‘hidden space’ (as DaisyDisk calls it).

Since I got this iMac I put mostly all of my files on an external drive, so as to keep the Fusion drive usage below 128 gigs and my full internal storage would operate on SSD speed.
Now the system started to feel slow, which is why I checked…

Does anyone know how to fix this? Could it be the large Photoshop documents I work with, being cached or something? (3,5 gigs a piece on average). I could do a reboot, but last time I did that the startup was so slow I was actually afraid it wouldn’t start at all. So I’m hesitant to reboot. Especially during a workweek.
I’m planning to get a new Mac between next week and the end of the year, so I don’t wanna do anything too crazy to the system these last couple of months.

kIsEJpU.jpg
 
H.Finch said:
Hi all,

Quick question: I checked my disc space usage this morning and came to the stunning conclusion that my iMac (late 2012, 1 tb fusion drive) has 205 gigs of ‘hidden space’ (as DaisyDisk calls it).

Since I got this iMac I put mostly all of my files on an external drive, so as to keep the Fusion drive usage below 128 gigs and my full internal storage would operate on SSD speed.
Now the system started to feel slow, which is why I checked…

Does anyone know how to fix this? Could it be the large Photoshop documents I work with, being cached or something? (3,5 gigs a piece on average). I could do a reboot, but last time I did that the startup was so slow I was actually afraid it wouldn’t start at all. So I’m hesitant to reboot. Especially during a workweek.
I’m planning to get a new Mac between next week and the end of the year, so I don’t wanna do anything too crazy to the system these last couple of months.

kIsEJpU.jpg
Click to expand...

You can upgrade to the non-apple store version & it will display what that is. It should be system directory files...though I haven't seen it near that large. Think of the var folder...that should be what it is.
 
I really hope not... I hope this iMac will keep running for a few more months... But I dont think 200 gigs of space being taken up means the hdd is dying...
 
Best free tool for determining just what is eating up your space:
Diskwave:
https://diskwave.barthe.ph

Just download and launch it.
You'll see what to do next.

TIP: Go to preferences and set it so that normally-invisible files are made VISIBLE.
Helps a lot.
 
H.Finch said:
I really hope not... I hope this iMac will keep running for a few more months... But I dont think 200 gigs of space being taken up means the hdd is dying...
Click to expand...
Check out the SMART report in the Disk Utility, that may report some issues.
 
Thanks for the tips guys, here's the weird thing... I rebooted... and now the used space is back to 160 gigs instead of the previous 374... The entire 205 of 'unused, but used space' is gone... I have no clue as to what happend... But I'm happy it seems fixed now...
 
I though it might... but then again... a swap space of 200+ gigs!?... that seems really extreme doesn't it? I though OSX was really efficient with memory usage and the likes...
 
No, never used it... But I'm happy all seems fixed now. I guess my iMac will now keep chugging on until my next Mac comes. Now all I want is Apple to release a standalone display again and make the Macbook Pro keybord better and I'll be the happiest man on earth.
 
My opinion only, but…

… unless you have some work going that you need to carry over from night till the next day, the best way to keep ANY Mac running smoothly is to shut down each night and reboot each morning. It just "cleans things out" that would otherwise accumulate over time. Time and time again, the "strange problems" a Mac user may be experiencing will disappear after a reboot (or even a "log out and log in".

Nothing like a "fresh start"...
 
Last edited:
I think you have a point there... Although I did hear somewhere that rebooting, and starting your Mac up from zero to 7200 rpm lets say (fans, or disc etc), every day... has more tear on your Mac hardware… And even that it costs more power to reboot every day…
 
Usually it helps to simply run the system Disk Utility's "First Aid". Sometimes it helps to run it in recovery mode (hold Cmd+R upon reboot), because sometimes it may not be able to fix errors while the disk is mounted. Finally, if that didn't help, you can try rebuilding the HFS catalog file using the fsck_hfs utility, but be sure to backup first because it may sometimes fail. See for more detail: https://daisydiskapp.com/manual/4/en/Topics/HiddenSpace.html
 
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