Disk space reported differently around OS X

[jamrolu]

Hi everyone - I'm hoping someone can help me solve a mystery!

I've got a 2012 MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD running OS X Mavericks 10.9.5.
When I view info about the hard disk, it shows as having 93GB free - however, when I view System Information, it says 48GB free.

45GB seems to have gone missing somewhere!

I've attached a screenshot showing both numbers.

I have done a repair permissions and repair disk using Disk Utility but no change.
Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!
James

 

[triptolemus]

Read this... I think it explains what you're seeing...

http://www.cnet.com/news/options-for-checking-free-hard-drive-space-in-os-x/

While this offers a user-friendly graphic of your drive's space, keep in mind that the sizes reported are based on the system's Spotlight index. This means that if there is an indexing problem, it may show incorrect sizes in the About this Mac window.

 

[DeltaMac]

You will notice that the 45.4 GB is exactly what the "Backup" item shows.
That's the on-disk backup from your Time Machine. That space should be recovered on the SSD, if you connect your external drive that you use for Time Machine backups. You'll need to allow time for the backup files to transfer.

 

[jamrolu]

Thanks for the link and info guys.

I backup over WiFi to a Time Capsule, which is running regularly so I don't think there's a 'backlog' of backups waiting to go up… could it be a cache of changed files in case I want to roll back, without having to pull them down from the Time Capsule?

Thanks
James

 

[maflynn]

Its not a backlog, but time machine actually uses your internal drive for back ups.

If you wish to stop that, then issue the following command in the terminal
sudo tmutil disablelocal

 

[Rafaeldm]

well I believe I should leave my opinion on the matter, a few weeks ago I had like 120 gb allocated to the "other" section, what I did to clean that space was to repair the permissions and fix the ssd the disk utility, some errors were show, and then the "other" was like obliterated by 80%..

hope that helps, sorry for the ****** english

edit : well your problem has nothing to do with mine, that space is the time machine local backup, if you use an external time machine you can google how to disable the local time machine backup..

 

[jamrolu]

Thanks for all your replies. Armed with some of your info I found this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878

Solved!