Disk space in OSX lion 10.7.5 - GONE / Missing

[Mowat]

Hi

Longtime lurker… First poster

I have a iMac running 10.7.5 and the diskspace is just disappearing.. I've searched and searched turned off mobile backups / turned off time machine everything. I'm down to the final straw of reloading the system.

But I don't want to do that.. I got away from windows for a reason !!!

I'm a long time unix user/admin but this is just driving me nuts. DF shows full with 148gb used but DU only comes up with 13 gb !!!

here are the outputs… the /Volumes have the Time Machine mounted. And yes I've unmounted it and looked underneath for hidden / bad files.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

:/ root# df -hl
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 148Gi 148Gi 32Mi 100% /
/dev/disk2s2 2.7Ti 64Gi 2.6Ti 3% /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
:/ root# du -sh *
4.0G Applications
4.0K Developer
4.8G Library
0B Network
3.1G System
4.0K User Guides And Information
18G Users
2.1T Volumes
3.7M bin
0B cores
4.5K dev
4.0K etc
1.0K home
15M mach_kernel
1.0K net
1.3G private
2.4M sbin
4.0K tmp
427M usr
4.0K var

 

[tag]

Is there something weird going on in /Volumes? That is the only place I could see the data going.

I compared your output to mine.

With external drive mounted...

┌(rob@memorycore)-(Jobs:0)-(17:26:59 Mon Sep 16)
└(/)--> df -hl
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused     ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2  223Gi   65Gi  158Gi    30%  17040786  41357076   29%   /
/dev/disk1s2  2.7Ti  1.7Ti  1.0Ti    64% 232687703 133540828   64%   /Volumes/3TB Seagate Movies

┌(rob@memorycore)-(Jobs:0)-(17:31:08 Mon Sep 16)
└(/)--> sudo du -h -d 1 / | grep ./Volumes
1.7T	./Volumes

And without...

┌┌(rob@memorycore)-(Jobs:0)-(17:34:39 Mon Sep 16)
└(/)--> df -hl
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2  223Gi   65Gi  158Gi    30% 17040408 41357454   29%   /

┌(rob@memorycore)-(Jobs:0)-(17:35:39 Mon Sep 16)
└(/)--> sudo du -h -d 1 / | grep ./Volumes
4.0K	./Volumes

It seems that ./Volumes should only take up used space from your external drives. Though when you look at yours, it lists ./Volumes at 2.1T, when it from what I'm reading here, should only be like 60G or so.

With all external drives unmounted, what is the output of "sudo du -h -d 1 / | grep ./Volumes" and what exactly is in there, because honestly I can't figure the problem being anywhere else.

The only other thing I can think of is have you restarted you computer since you've noticed this problem? On linux I've heard people sometimes having issues where some rogue process was taking up tons of disk space, and df/dh could not detect the space properly. So if you reboot do you regain your missing space?

 

[Weaselboy]

Try the free app OmniDiskSweeper to get a graphical overview of where data is stored on the drive. A big chunk like that should jump out at you in the app.

 

[Mowat]

Try the free app OmniDiskSweeper to get a graphical overview of where data is stored on the drive. A big chunk like that should jump out at you in the app.

I've done OmniDiskSweeper and Disk Inventory X. and one other. None of the tools "see" whats eating it. Even DU doesn't have list it.

The "/Volumes" is the Time machine backups from a NAS. I have unmounted it and looked underneath. Just at the time of the du it was mounted.

:/ root# df -hl
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 148Gi 148Gi 32Mi 100% /
/dev/disk2s2 2.7Ti 64Gi 2.6Ti 3% /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

Still no luck finding anything

----------

Is there something weird going on in /Volumes? That is the only place I could see the data going.



The only other thing I can think of is have you restarted you computer since you've noticed this problem? On linux I've heard people sometimes having issues where some rogue process was taking up tons of disk space, and df/dh could not detect the space properly. So if you reboot do you regain your missing space?

I've checked it unmounted - Nothing in there and du is negligible after.

And yup rebooted multiple multiple times. I've deleted other stuff to make room. And then the mysterious space gets eaten back up.

This makes no sense at all.

 

[Mowat]

any other ideas.. before I end up pulling a microsoft and reload it..

 

[chown33]

Disk Utility.app > Verify Disk

Repeat for each mounted volume. Note: Verify Disk, not Verify Permissions.

If there are any errors, copy and paste them into a reply post.

 

[tag]

any other ideas.. before I end up pulling a microsoft and reload it..

I came across this apple thread which says that Time Machine could be not deleting trashed backups properly. In root directory, do you have .MobileBackups.trash ? and if so how big is it?

 

[chown33]

...
I'm a long time unix user/admin but this is just driving me nuts. DF shows full with 148gb used but DU only comes up with 13 gb !!!
...
:/ root# du -sh *

That 'du' command line won't show the entire disk contents. It omits every directory and file in / that starts with . (dot). It does this because the shell pattern * never matches a name that starts with . (dot).

Try this command, running as root:

du -chxd 1 /

This will also give a total at the end, so you don't have to manually add things up.

That command won't cross file-system boundaries, so if you want numbers for your mounted TM Backups disk, make another command with its pathname, and all other options the same.

Note that the reported total may still not add up to the total space used on a volume (e.g. by Disk Utility or Activity Monitor), because 'du' doesn't account for things like directory structure. I don't know if 'du' counts resource-forks, extended attributes, or the space used by ACLs. ACLs strike me as unlikely to be a significant amount, but I can imagine resource-forks and extended attributes adding up to something significant.

Man pages:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/du.1.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/xattr.1.html

 

[Mowat]

That 'du' command line won't show the entire disk contents. It omits every directory and file in / that starts with . (dot). It does this because the shell pattern * never matches a name that starts with . (dot).

Try this command, running as root:

du -chxd 1 /

This will also give a total at the end, so you don't have to manually add things up.

You are the MAN…

I had looked into the .mobile backups and of course trashes. I hadn't ignored the .files but…Damit

root# du -chxd 1 /
180K /.DocumentRevisions-V100
4.0K /.fseventsd
115G /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
4.0G /Applications
3.7M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
4.0K /Developer
1.0K /home
4.8G /Library
1.0K /net
0B /Network
1.3G /private
2.4M /sbin
3.1G /System
19G /Users
427M /usr
4.0K /Volumes
147G /
147G total

:/root# cd .Spotlight-V100/
:.Spotlight-V100 root# ls
Store-V1 Store-V2 VolumeConfiguration.plist
:.Spotlight-V100 root# ls -al
total 8
drwx------ 5 root wheel 170 Dec 20 2012 .
drwxr-xr-x 34 root wheel 1224 Dec 23 2012 ..
drwx------ 4 root wheel 136 May 17 2009 Store-V1
drwx------ 3 root wheel 102 May 9 23:16 Store-V2
-rw------- 1 root wheel 3244 May 9 23:14 VolumeConfiguration.plist
:.Spotlight-V100 root# du -sh *
115G Store-V1
103M Store-V2
4.0K VolumeConfiguration.plist
:.Spotlight-V100 root# rm -rf ./Store-V1
:.Spotlight-V100 root# df -h .
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 148Gi 33Gi 115Gi 23% /
:.Spotlight-V100 root#

I have to assume the version 1 was leftover from a upgrade ( this one has been upgraded at least 3 versions without a reload ( AS IT IS intended !! )

Thanks so much I've been pounding my head on this for a couple of weeks refusing to give up. And the Son has been begging for the IOS7 upgrade all day. And of course not enough space to update iTunes !!

Thanks Again !!

----------

Being a . "Root" file this is also why I'm sure all the graphical tools missed this as well.

Something to pass on to the Developers...

 

[VS511]

This works perfectly, for newbies.

sudo -s du -chxd 1 /

118M /.DocumentRevisions-V100
7.6M /.DocumentRevisions-V100 (from old Mac)
34M /.fseventsd
0B /.PKInstallSandboxManager
457M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
11G /Applications
2.3M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
0B /Extensions
1.0K /home
6.0G /Library
1.0K /net
0B /Network
184M /opt
2.7G /private
1004K /sbin
10G /System
53G /Users
512M /usr
4.0K /Volumes
85G /
85G total

Which one seems abnormal? Even then, out of 120GB, I only get 27GB free. 8GB lost in VRAM/Cahce?!

Wait... So there's something inside the /Users folder itself that's hiding. The following app reports 41GB used whereas clearly 60GB is being used!

http://i.imgur.com/xSznJII.png

Just want to thank the OP and more importantly the person who found the solution <3. Also, now, how do I comprehensively (in terminal) du the Users folder in specific?

EDIT: Problem solved! Thanks so much, again. I also learned some terminal along the way, albeit negligible, a 100% apt for my needs.

 

[Weaselboy]

Also, now, how do I comprehensively (in terminal) du the Users folder in specific?

Do this.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /Users

That will show all users and space used by each. Then you can drill down further by substituting the real user name and so on.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /Users/username

Then maybe this... and so on. Get the idea?

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /Users/username/Documents

 

[VS511]

Do this.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /Users

That will show all users and space used by each. Then you can drill down further by substituting the real user name and so on.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /Users/username

Then maybe this... and so on. Get the idea?

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /Users/username/Documents

Thanks Weaselboy, so foolish of me to not have figured that out myself and instead i just posted it on the forum in a hurry. I did figure it out after like 2 minutes of posting it and my last edit reflects that but hey, still, thanks . My OCD is now receding haha