Finder can't count

[APPLENEWBIE]

I have a 40gb hard drive. Finder says it has 38.6 gb of useful space. THe total of all applications, library, documents, users, etc is right at 26gb. the trash is empty. So how come finder tells me that i only have 6 gb available on the hard drive? it seems like 6 gb is missing.... any ideas?

 

[atszyman]

I have a 40gb hard drive. Finder says it has 38.6 gb of useful space. THe total of all applications, library, documents, users, etc is right at 26gb. the trash is empty. So how come finder tells me that i only have 6 gb available on the hard drive? it seems like 6 gb is missing.... any ideas?

There are lots of hidden files that you cannot see in a typical finder window, one of which is the swp file that does the virtual memory for your computer. I've seen my HD space vary by a couple of GB when certain apps are quit and restarted due to either memory hogging or leaking. If you only have a small amount of ram in the computer and a lot of apps that run/hog RAM your space could be taken up by the swp file.

Try restarting and/or closing all of your apps and see if any of the space comes back.

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

There are lots of hidden files that you cannot see in a typical finder window, one of which is the swp file that does the virtual memory for your computer. I've seen my HD space vary by a couple of GB when certain apps are quit and restarted due to either memory hogging or leaking. If you only have a small amount of ram in the computer and a lot of apps that run/hog RAM your space could be taken up by the swp file.

Try restarting and/or closing all of your apps and see if any of the space comes back.

Thanks for the suggestions. Computer has 1gb ram. No other apps open besides safari. Restarted. Same situation. Maybe there are 6gb in hidden files?

 

[slooksterPSV]

40 GB Drive based on 1,000,000,000 bytes = 1 GB, where in real computer terms: 1024 bytes = 1KB
1024 KB = 1MB
1024 MB = 1GB
Hence 1,073,741,824 bytes really is 1 GB

so a 40 GB Drive they say is 40,000,000,000 and divide that out by 1024 a few times and you get: 37.252902984619141 GB

 

[atszyman]

40 GB Drive based on 1,000,000,000 bytes = 1 GB, where in real computer terms: 1024 bytes = 1KB
1024 KB = 1MB
1024 MB = 1GB
Hence 1,073,741,824 bytes really is 1 GB

so a 40 GB Drive they say is 40,000,000,000 and divide that out by 1024 a few times and you get: 37.252902984619141 GB

I think he's past that point... He mentions that Finder says it has 38.6 GB of useable space, however when he looks at all the folders on his computer he sees 26 GB available and Finder only says he has 6 GB left. 26+6 = 32, 38-32=6 GB of space tied up somewhere.

Are there any other users on this computer? If you don't have access to other users' files you won't get them counted in the directory total. If I log in under my admin account and do a "Get Info" on my normal user directory, I only see about 2.8 GB taken up by that account. I know this is completely wrong since I have about 12 GB in movie files and 14+ GB in iTunes files, which evidently aren't counted.

 

[slooksterPSV]

Oops sorry about that, but yeah other accounts it will not account for the space and that. If you try to get info on that account which you do not have access to because you're logged into another account, like he stated above me and that. Yeah...