Disk Space Issue - conflicting info

[UPBaylor]

I have a late 2009 Macbook (white unibody) and I'm trying to upgrade to Yosemite. I keep getting an error message saying that I don't have enough memory to do so. However, I know there is very little on the hard drive (SSD replaced by me less than a year ago). Running my disk utility, it says I have 200GB of 240GB available. There is only a single partition to the drive. So, I'm stuck and coming here for suggestions.

And, FWIW, I upped the RAM to 8 GB years ago.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Weaselboy]

Run the command below in Terminal and give it a minute to complete, then post the results up here for us to take a look. This command will list the base folders and the size of each in GB.

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

 

[UPBaylor]

Run the command below in Terminal and give it a minute to complete, then post the results up here for us to take a look. This command will list the base folders and the size of each in GB.

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

Thanks! I will do so as soon as I get back to that computer.

 

[UPBaylor]

Run the command below in Terminal and give it a minute to complete, then post the results up here for us to take a look. This command will list the base folders and the size of each in GB.

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

Here is a copy/paste of the results:

1 /.DocumentRevisions-V100
1 /.fseventsd
1 /.MobileBackups
1 /.Spotlight-V100
0 /.Trashes
0 /.vol
7 /Applications
1 /bin
1 /dev
1 /home
6 /Library
1 /net
10 /private
1 /sbin
4 /System
197 /Users
1 /usr
1 /Volumes
222 /
222 total

I have no idea what this all means or how to interpret this. The one thing that kind of stands out to me is the 197 /Users. Don't know what it means, but this computer never had more than a single user set up on it - at least intentionally.

Thanks for any help or suggestions as to where to go next.

 

[TyWahn]

What OS does it have? It needs at least Snow Leopard to upgrade anything past that OS.

 

[UPBaylor]

What OS does it have? It needs at least Snow Leopard to upgrade anything past that OS.

10.7.5 Not sure the name associated with this one. Some things I'm kind knowledgable about and some things I'm completely clueless.

But, I think I have solved my original problem in terms of space but I still don't understand it. My wife has a (Microsoft) One Drive folder on the computer and it had nearly 200 GB of videos. I'm uploading those right now to her cloud One Drive account, then I'll delete.

However, I still don't understand that when I ran my disk diagnostics it was showing nearly 200 GB of free space when the hard drive only has 240 GB capacity. I clearly haven't learned Apple's architecture - probably because it's never really been an issue that needed investigating.

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for any help or suggestions as to where to go next.

Okay... let's drill down a little more in the /Users folder and see what is going on.

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

Run this command to see what is going on there. You can modify the command to keep looking. For example, /Users/bob/Documents would show you how much space that folder is using. You get the idea.

 

[UPBaylor]

Okay... let's drill down a little more in the /Users folder and see what is going on.

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

Run this command to see what is going on there. You can modify the command to keep looking. For example, /Users/bob/Documents would show you how much space that folder is using. You get the idea.

Here's what I get:

1 /Users/Shared
197 /Users/wife'sname
197 /Users
197 total

Then, when I use wife's name, I get a series of 1 / folders, but the one that is different and probably counts is this one:

180 /Users/wife'sname/OneDrive

What does the 180 mean? 180 GB or just folders or something else?

 

[Weaselboy]

Here's what I get:

1 /Users/Shared
197 /Users/wife'sname
197 /Users
197 total

Then, when I use wife's name, I get a series of 1 / folders, but the one that is different and probably counts is this one:

180 /Users/wife'sname/OneDrive

What does the 180 mean? 180 GB or just folders or something else?

Yep... 180 there means there is 180GB of data in that folder, so that seems like the culprit.