Free Space Discrepancy

[mike5411]

Hey everyone,

I have a quick question that hopefully someone can help me answer. When I right click my HDD and look at my used space, it says that I am using about 98 gigs. However in disk utility, it is saying I am using over little over 110 gigs. This is a decent discrepancy and I am worried that this difference might be an early indication of HDD failure.

Can someone please provide some insight?

Thank you

 

[Mersailios]

It's possible that this is being caused by Mac OS X 10.7's Versions feature, although I'm not 100% sure.

 

[mike5411]

It's possible that this is being caused by Mac OS X 10.7's Versions feature, although I'm not 100% sure.

Thank you for your response. That seems like it is a possible culprit however I'm not sure if that is the source.

Does versions only work with iWork and textedit? From what I have gathered that is what it seems. I exclusively use Office and do not have iWork installed. Therefore, I do not think the versions is using up that much space.

Thanks again

 

[joshuaginter]

I ran into this problem with my 64GB MacBook Air.

I deduced that the problem comes down to Lion's Time Machine feature. When not connected to your backup disk, Lion takes a snapshot of your backup changes and when you plug into your backup disk, those changes are loaded from the onboard storage to the external disk. These backups take up space, but are erased if the space is needed. Therefore, extra space is "used up" but is available if you need it.

So, my question: do you run Time Machine backups?

Hope this helps.

 

[heisenberg123]

I ran into this problem with my 64GB MacBook Air.

I deduced that the problem comes down to Lion's Time Machine feature. When not connected to your backup disk, Lion takes a snapshot of your backup changes and when you plug into your backup disk, those changes are loaded from the onboard storage to the external disk. These backups take up space, but are erased if the space is needed. Therefore, extra space is "used up" but is available if you need it.

So, my question: do you run Time Machine backups?

Hope this helps.

this is likey the case, the Time Machine local snapshots, do a time machine backup than it should clear that extra storage