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Backup Space without Time Machine

R

RuivoM

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 15, 2011
58
19
Hello, first of all, before posting this I googled a lot about this subject without success. What happens here is that my 'About my Mac' says I've almost 10gb in backups when I don't even use a Time Machine and it's deactivated. My Mac is almost out of the box (1 week old) and I am using the Captain OS X. First I even thought it could be the iOS backups of my iPhone/iPad but then I noticed I've only one local backup for my iPhone and is currently using 2gb more or less, not even closer to 10.

I also tried to use the terminal commands for the Time Machine backups to 'delete' them but as I mentioned before, since I don't have TM activated I don't have any backup created by it.

So my question is: What's this 10 GB of backups data? Where is it or what's creating it? Thank you!

PS: My model is a rMBP (last gen).
 
Run the command below in Terminal and tell me what it says. This will show how much is any space is being used by Time Machine's local snapshots. You are correct it should be zero it TM is off... but this will confirm for us it is in fact zero.

Code: 
sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

If that shows zero, the it is likely that storage graphic is just wrong. When the Spotlight index is corrupted that storage graphic will be incorrect. Run the command below in Terminal to reindex Spotlight then see if it still show something there for backups. Give it some time to complete the reindex.

Code: 
sudo mdutil -E /

The iOS backups do not show in that Backups section.
 
Weaselboy said:
Run the command below in Terminal and tell me what it says. This will show how much is any space is being used by Time Machine's local snapshots. You are correct it should be zero it TM is off... but this will confirm for us it is in fact zero.

Code: 
sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

If that shows zero, the it is likely that storage graphic is just wrong. When the Spotlight index is corrupted that storage graphic will be incorrect. Run the command below in Terminal to reindex Spotlight then see if it still show something there for backups. Give it some time to complete the reindex.

Code: 
sudo mdutil -E /

The iOS backups do not show in that Backups section.
Click to expand...

Code: 
du: /.MobileBackups: No such file or directory

This is what I got using the first command you gave me. Thank you for the quick reply.

edit: I used the second command of indexing, now I have 170 mb in backups but what was before something like 20gb in 'others' moved to 73gb. What the hell.
 
RuivoM said:
edit: I used the second command of indexing, now I have 170 mb in backups but what was before something like 20gb in 'others' moved to 73gb. What the hell.
Click to expand...

It is still in the middle of reindexing. Give it twenty minutes or so. If you start to type something in Spotlight you can see a progress bar at the bottom.
 
Weaselboy said:
It is still in the middle of reindexing. Give it twenty minutes or so. If you start to type something in Spotlight you can see a progress bar at the bottom.
Click to expand...
Oh, you're right. Didn't noticed that. The first information that I received about 'no such directory' means I don't have any local backup? Is it that?

Will I need to run any other command to stop indexing or it's automatically? Because I don't remember of ever indexing Spotlight on my Mac's. Thank you.
 
RuivoM said:
Oh, you're right. Didn't noticed that. The first information that I received about 'no such directory' means I don't have any local backup? Is it that?

Will I need to run any other command to stop indexing or it's automatically? Because I don't remember of ever indexing Spotlight on my Mac's. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Correct.... that first command proves you have nothing in local snapshots.

You don't need to anything... the command will just complete the reindex on its own.
 
Weaselboy said:
Correct.... that first command proves you have nothing in local snapshots.

You don't need to anything... the command will just complete the reindex on its own.
Click to expand...
It's now done. I still have 173 MB of backups, it's not a space that bugs me up but I still wonder what might be using this space since you said I shouldn't have any backup created.
 
Hmm... okay run this command so we can see everything then tell me the output. The command takes a couple minutes to complete.

Code: 
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

Also try turning Time Machine on briefly then back off and see if it is still there. I'm assuming you tried a reboot?
 
Weaselboy said:
Hmm... okay run this command so we can see everything then tell me the output. The command takes a couple minutes to complete.

Code: 
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

Also try turning Time Machine on briefly then back off and see if it is still there. I'm assuming you tried a reboot?
Click to expand...

That command just gave me this:

Code: 
1    /.DocumentRevisions-V100

1    /.fseventsd

0    /.PKInstallSandboxManager

2    /.Spotlight-V100

0    /.Trashes

0    /.vol
 
Weaselboy said:
It is not done yet. Give it more time.
Click to expand...
Code: 
1    /.DocumentRevisions-V100

1    /.fseventsd

0    /.PKInstallSandboxManager

2    /.Spotlight-V100

0    /.Trashes

0    /.vol

18    /Applications

1    /bin

0    /cores

1    /dev

1    /home

8    /Library

1    /net

0    /Network

5    /private

1    /sbin

6    /System

34    /Users

1    /usr

1    /Volumes

71    /

71    total

I think it's done now.
 
I don't see anything off there. What I was looking for is files from /.Mobilebackups get purged off to /.Mobilebackups.trash and sometimes get stuck there, but I'm not seeing that.

Did you try the other things I mentioned?

You also might try a command-r boot to recovery and from use Disk Utility to run first aid and see if that shows any errors.
 
Weaselboy said:
I don't see anything off there. What I was looking for is files from /.Mobilebackups get purged off to /.Mobilebackups.trash and sometimes get stuck there, but I'm not seeing that.

Did you try the other things I mentioned?

You also might try a command-r boot to recovery and from use Disk Utility to run first aid and see if that shows any errors.
Click to expand...
I will try those options in a while and I'll leave the feedback afterwards.

Edit:

It's now good after restarting the system. However it's mentioning I've more than 30gb in 'other' yellow section. I don't really understand why because my system has nothing but pictures, some apps (30gb in apps) and not much else. I noticed the the other space increased after the indexing, something like the space before used from the backups is now being used by the other section. Is there any way to check more or less what's using the others section, details or something like that?
 
Last edited:
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