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Deleting 80GB of iMovie Files Netted About 5GB

C

chrison600

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
9
0
Hi all,

The wife's computer started throwing start up disc space errors some time ago. Did some looking and discovered the dreaded "Other" consuming most of the HDD space. Did some more looking and found that a big culprit was iMovie files. Bought an external drive and archived all of the iMovie content, then deleted said content from the local HDD. Verified that about 80GB was moved onto the external but MBP was still slow. Checked local HDD space and Other seems to have simply overtaken the newly freed space.

What is up?

Chris
 
Could this be because of DropBox? I'm reading things about a hidden cache that can grow into a problem.

Chris
 
To ask the obvious, did you empty the trash after moving the files? Are local time machine backups turned on? They should manage themselves but it might be a problem.

Apple's disk info is rarely accurate about where the space is being used. I use DaisyDisk to map the drive and see where space is being used. Other programs will do the same but I like the visual representation that DD uses.
 
glenthompson said:
...did you empty the trash after moving the files?
Click to expand...

Sure did. And rebooted the machine just to make sure.

glenthompson said:
Are local time machine backups turned on? They should manage themselves but it might be a problem.
Click to expand...

Not sure. TM backs up to a Time Capsule. Does it also make local copies?

I just don't understand why an 80GB change isn't reflected in the on board disk status.

Chris
 
chrison600 said:
Sure did. And rebooted the machine just to make sure.



Not sure. TM backs up to a Time Capsule. Does it also make local copies?

I just don't understand why an 80GB change isn't reflected in the on board disk status.

Chris
Click to expand...

Yes, local Time Machine snapshots are saved in the internal drive.

Disable them to reclaim hard drive space. You can do so by opening Terminal and typing sudo tmutil disablelocal
 
Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

If you run it with sudo (As shown below), it will include some system files that it woud not normally have access to scan. That is a more accurate representation of what's consuming your drive.
Code: 
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Another option is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Like the sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper command, it will scan all directories, but produce a text file as opposed to showing the results in a window

While I agree local snapshots are the typical culprit, getting a display of what's consuming the drive is the best approach.
 
maflynn said:
Download and use OmniDiskSweeper
Click to expand...

Thank you so much. DiskSweeper showed a very large iMovie "library" file. Turns out that even when you move the files out of the iMovie Projects and Events folders, iMovie keeps data in its Library. Opening iMovie and deleting the library from within the iMovie interface cleared almost 120GB of space.

Sweet!

Chris
 
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