256GB rMBP - only using 128GB?

[jclardy]

So I just noticed something strange on my 2012 rMBP. I have a 256GB SSD which is shown in disk utility as 250.14 GB. I am running low on space so I ran daisy disk to see where I could free up space.

This is where it gets weird. The total of all files on the drive comes out to around 121 GB. Yet my computer thinks it has 243.1 GB used. I only have one partition.

Are there some hidden files somewhere that could be taking up 100+ GB? Do I just need to backup and reformat?

The only thing I can think of is that I did move to this machine from a 128GB MBA using migration assistant. I only noticed recently as I just started running out of space on here...but I should have a lot more available...



EDIT: Just thought of something, could it be time machine local backups? I haven't plugged into my backup disk in a few months (Yeah I know...but I have been using primarily my iMac for work now.)

EDIT 2: One more thing, looking at the disk in About This Mac it is showing "Movies" taking up 101 GB, my movies folder on the ssd is only listed at 5.6GB in finder. I probably had that much space in video at some point as I shoot wedding videos, but then remove it from the drive once it is edited. Could there be some kind of ghost files still taking up space?

 

[maflynn]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space (including hidden files/folders).

 

[jclardy]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space (including hidden files/folders).

Thanks for the tip, that is a cool little app. But I feel a bit dumb now as I found the problem - A few months ago I created a second user just for video editing so that it would be cleaner to clean up...but I forgot it existed. And sure enough, 100GB of video files in the user folder.

Though both daisy disk and OmniDiskSweeper didn't show the size of that user folder when logged in as an administrator account, that seems a bit strange to me.