75 GB Missing on my Macbook, plz help !!

[billberthi]

Hey there, I just bought a used Macbook pro. I've deleted everything on the computer, every users, itune library, iphoto library, etc...

I've used mackeeper, idefrag, omnidisksweeper.

Omnidisksweeper is telling me that i'm using 20.5 Gig, which is really what i'm using right now. But my in my hard drive info, it's telling me that i'm using 95.5 gig out of my 250 gig total hard drive space... where is that space all gone?

I can't format the hard drive, because my installation disk is older than my OS version... when I try booting from the installation disk, it just won't boot, I keep getting error... what should I do ??? thank you!

 

[windowstomac]

Perhaps time machine backups that include all that stuff you have deleted?

 

[johnhurley]

Hey there, I just bought a used Macbook pro. I've deleted everything on the computer, every users, itune library, iphoto library, etc...

I've used mackeeper, idefrag, omnidisksweeper.

Omnidisksweeper is telling me that i'm using 20.5 Gig, which is really what i'm using right now. But my in my hard drive info, it's telling me that i'm using 95.5 gig out of my 250 gig total hard drive space... where is that space all gone?

I can't format the hard drive, because my installation disk is older than my OS version... when I try booting from the installation disk, it just won't boot, I keep getting error... what should I do ??? thank you!

Click the Apple icon in the menu bar and then click About this Mac

Click More Info ( most of the way down ) ... then click Storage ( in the top area light grey aka hard to see ).

That should give you a good breakdown of where your storage is being taken up.

Is it possible you have multiple partitions on your system ( like an old bootcamp one for example )?

 

[billberthi]

Time Machine is not configured... so it can't be backups... ?

I'm on Snow Leopard 10.6.8, so I don't think I have the ''storage view'' you're talking about, i tried Disk Inventory X... look my screenshot, first window says that i'm using 89.3 GB, but the scan says that i'm actually using 23.9 GB.

thanks guys for trying to help me!

 

[MacForScience]

Hey there, I just bought a used Macbook pro. I've deleted everything on the computer, every users, itune library, iphoto library, etc...

I've used mackeeper, idefrag, omnidisksweeper.

Omnidisksweeper is telling me that i'm using 20.5 Gig, which is really what i'm using right now. But my in my hard drive info, it's telling me that i'm using 95.5 gig out of my 250 gig total hard drive space... where is that space all gone?

I can't format the hard drive, because my installation disk is older than my OS version... when I try booting from the installation disk, it just won't boot, I keep getting error... what should I do ??? thank you!

If you are using OS 10.7 chances are the space is being consumed with local time machine backups.

Cheers

 

[billberthi]

you mean, if I install 10.7 my space will be recovered ?! I'm on 10.6.8 right now.

 

[ytk]

If you want to get a good picture of your hard drive usage, you can use the du command in the terminal. Try starting with this:

sudo du -h -d1 -Idev /

It'll ask you for your password, and it'll then walk your entire drive and calculate where the storage is being used. It'll only report the totals for each of the folders in the root of the drive though, so you're not overwhelmed with information. Then, take a look at the output, and if you notice that one of the folders, say, /Users, seems disproportionately large, you can investigate just that folder by changing the above command to

sudo du -h -d1 /Users

And so on until you've discovered where exactly the missing data is. It'll be a bit tedious I'm afraid, but it's the surest way to root out the problem. BTW, the -Idev part only needs to be in the first iteration, to avoid a bug that causes the command to fail when it walks a part of the /dev folder.