Accounting for the Space taken on my new MBA

[michellemixue]

Hi, i've been using the mbp for 3.5yrs so far but pretty clueless. i spent weeks deleting photos (via iphotos) on my old macbook pro before cloning the whole hard disk onto a external hdd. I didn't want to use migration assistant and carry inherent problems over to my mba. Was hoping for some control over the space issue although i have 512gb of ssd on my new laptop. don't want clutter. Decided to only transfer my iphoto, itunes and placed all my documents on dropbox.

So far, i only have my dropbox synced on my new laptop plus my iphoto library i dragged over from my external hdd to replace the iphoto library on it. iphoto should be 90gb worth (when i check on my old laptop using right click, get info), dropbox about 3gb.

Can anybody tell me why when i go to "about this mac>>Storage" on the new mba, i have 1gb of audio, 19.92gb of movies, 70.78gb of photos, 19.67gb of OTHERS?

is the 19.92gb of movies the video files i have on my iphoto?

Hope someone can shed some light on this matter. Your response is appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[GGJstudios]

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space​

For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:

• Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
• For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion or later, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled by entering the following command in Terminal: sudo tmutil disablelocal.
  About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs​
• Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
• Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
  
• Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
• Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
• Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:

• Encrypted drive
• Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
• App filling log file
• App or file was 89GB
• Drive needed to be re-indexed
• Time Machine backup file
• Large app cache file
• Garageband files and video podcasts
• Oversized email being duplicated
• Another email issue
• 18.45EB of movies shown

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

 

[Weaselboy]

Can anybody tell me why when i go to "about this mac>>Storage" on the new mba, i have 1gb of audio, 19.92gb of movies, 70.78gb of photos, 19.67gb of OTHERS?

is the 19.92gb of movies the video files i have on my iphoto?

Yes, any videos on the machine get counted in that total. Even with a new machine and no videos or music/photos added there will be some data in those categories as the OS itself contains all three of those file types.

When you look at that graphic, "Other" is essentially everything that does not fall into one of the other categories, such as the OS itself.

I think you are in good shape.

 

[michellemixue]

Thanks for the quick response. I will continue to clear my iphoto as much as i can even on this new machine.