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Freeing up hard drive space

J

james*b

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 2, 2011
143
0
Hi -
I am trying to free up hard drive space on my MBP.
When I go to About This Mac > Storage, it shows that I have 35gb+ of video.
However I have no idea where these could be.
Could anyone suggest how I can find these files?
Also does anyone have any general tips about how to find/manage files? I am not getting that far with finder - I have only found about 25% of the allegedly filled space - where is the rest of the files likely to be?
Many thanks,
 
Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

If you run it with sudo (As shown below), it will include some system files that it woud not normally have access to scan. That is a more accurate representation of what's consuming your drive.
Code: 
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Another option is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Like the sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper command, it will scan all directories, but produce a text file as opposed to showing the results in a window
 
Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain: For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
  • Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
  • For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion or later, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled by entering the following command in Terminal: sudo tmutil disablelocal.
  • Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
  • Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
    attachment.php
  • Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
  • Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
  • Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question: Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X
 
Hi, thanks for the advice, I verified the disk and received a bunch of warnings:

"Disc utility stopped verifying "Mac OS X
This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer.. etc
The message lists:
- Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks
- Invalid volume free block count
- The volume Mac OS X was found corrupt and needs to be repaired
Error: This disk needs to repaired us…es window appears, choose Disk Utility."

I am backing up now and will follow the above instructions.
Is this anything serious and would it explain the "missing" disk space?
Thanks!
 
james*b said:
Hi, thanks for the advice, I verified the disk and received a bunch of warnings:

"Disc utility stopped verifying "Mac OS X
This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer.. etc
The message lists:
- Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks
- Invalid volume free block count
- The volume Mac OS X was found corrupt and needs to be repaired
Error: This disk needs to repaired us…es window appears, choose Disk Utility."

I am backing up now and will follow the above instructions.
Is this anything serious and would it explain the "missing" disk space?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Could be your hard drive on its way out.

You can use this chance to speed up your Mac greatly with an SSD.
 
Try something called DiskWave.

It will show you files BY NAME and by size. Largest size above, smaller sizes below.

Quite different from the other apps that show "block graphics", with no names to help you understand what-is-what.
 
Thanks - when time machine backs up does it normally only make an incremental back up, rather than backing up the whole drive? I never really noticed before..
 
james*b said:
Thanks - when time machine backs up does it normally only make an incremental back up, rather than backing up the whole drive? I never really noticed before..
Click to expand...

First time is the whole machine, the hourly backups are incremental.
 
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