Disk space totals don't add up

[japanime]

"About This Mac" reports that I have about 20 gigabytes of free space available on my MacBook Air. Disk Utility also tells me I have 20 gigs available.

However, the Finder view indicates I have 33 gigabytes of free space.

I don't understand this discrepancy.

 

[0d085d]

My numbers are slightly different as well, now that I look (19.72 GB and 22.69 GB).

I think that breakdown in About This Mac is drawn up from Spotlight indexing, so it might be that the space free is only as up to date as Spotlight.

 

[AFEPPL]

re-index the drive.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201716

or you can use mdutil from the command line.

 

[motrek]

"About This Mac" reports that I have about 20 gigabytes of free space available on my MacBook Air. Disk Utility also tells me I have 20 gigs available.

However, the Finder view indicates I have 33 gigabytes of free space.

I don't understand this discrepancy.

​

That window is known to be horribly buggy.

Best is to download a shareware program called Disk Inventory X and that will tell you what files are taking up how much space on your drive.

 

[japanime]

That window is known to be horribly buggy.

Best is to download a shareware program called Disk Inventory X and that will tell you what files are taking up how much space on your drive.

Thanks, everyone, for your answers and input. Re-indexing the drive did the trick.

 

[japanime]

Well, I thought re-indexing had done the trick, but the Finder view is back to indicating that there is more available space than the About this Mac window and Disk Utility indicate.

That window is known to be horribly buggy.

Which window are you talking about? The Finder view, or About this Mac?

In the meantime, as you suggested, I will give Disk Inventory X a try.

 

[japanime]

I just found a thread in the Discussions on apple.com that addresses this issue. Seems that it is an issue with Time Machine and Finder. I followed the instructions (toggling Time Machine off, then restarting the Finder through a force-quit) and About this Mac and Finder view once again show the same amount of space available. Whew!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7052513

 

[motrek]

...
Which window are you talking about? The Finder view, or About this Mac?

In the meantime, as you suggested, I will give Disk Inventory X a try.

Sorry for being ambiguous. The Finder "Get Info" window is correct.

The "About This Mac" window is incorrect and the people who made it should be fired.

I wouldn't worry about reindexing, toggling Time Machine, etc. to get that piece of crap to work right. It's a huge waste of time.

 

[DavidLynch]

Mine is WAY off too. I assumed it was the most recent El Cap beta causing it.

 

[Phil A.]

as mentioned

I just found a thread in the Discussions on apple.com that addresses this issue. Seems that it is an issue with Time Machine and Finder. I followed the instructions (toggling Time Machine off, then restarting the Finder through a force-quit) and About this Mac and Finder view once again show the same amount of space available. Whew!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7052513

It's not actually an "issue", but rather by design: By default, Time Machine will make local snapshots on a portable Mac - These snapshots are auto-managed and removed if space is needed.

Because of this, Finder doesn't include the space used by local snapshots in its calculations of free space: If you look at your first post, the difference between the 2 (13GB) is the space taken up by backups

If you want to completely disable the use of local snapshots, you can do it with this terminal command

sudo tmutil disablelocal

This will disable local snapshots and remove the existing ones from your disk (it takes a while to clean them up though)

You can re-enable them with

sudo tmutil enablelocal

 

[japanime]

It's not actually an "issue", but rather by design: By default, Time Machine will make local snapshots on a portable Mac - These snapshots are auto-managed and removed if space is needed.

Because of this, Finder doesn't include the space used by local snapshots in its calculations of free space: If you look at your first post, the difference between the 2 (13GB) is the space taken up by backups

Then I'm still confused. Because when I toggled Time Machine off, the amount of available space being shown in the Finder decreased (to match the amount shown in About this Mac). Did the toggle make the Finder recognize the presence of the local snapshots that it was previously ignoring?

 

[Phil A.]

Then I'm still confused. Because when I toggled Time Machine off, the amount of available space being shown in the Finder decreased (to match the amount shown in About this Mac). Did the toggle make the Finder recognize the presence of the local snapshots that it was previously ignoring?

It will until the old snapshots have been cleaned up (which can take a while)

 

[BigMcGuire]

Does doing sudo tmutil disablelocal screw with timemachine?

 

[Phil A.]

It stops time machine from using your internal disk for local snapshots so if you're not connected to your backup device it won't be creating any backups but apart from that, I've not noticed any issues at all