Hey guys, I am relatively new to Macs and I have a quick question. Let's say I download a movie, the movie is on my desktop. I proceed to dump the movie to my external drive and then dump the one that's on my desktop to the Trash Bin, I then empty the Trash Bin but for some reason when I go to About my Mac->Storage the amount of free HD space does not go back up. I've downloaded numerous movies and the deleted them but like I said before the memory doesn't seem to be freeing up. I am not down to 60GB free out of 500GB and no matter what I delete the hD space does not seem to be increasing back up. What am I doing wrong??
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Freeing up HD Space
- Thread starter AeroSatan
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have a free application called disks ace that I use to see what is on my hard drives and it is very useful. You can look at everything on your internal drive and any external hard drive you have plugged in. Here is the link you should give it a try.
http://diskwave.barthe.ph/index.html
http://diskwave.barthe.ph/index.html
^^Although easy it's not really needed, you can click each folder on the root level and get info on it, then if you find a huge folder open it and do the same on all folders inside and so on.
The only problem here is that not all folders are visible.
To make folders visible you can do this in terminal but there is also a tiny program which does this for you, it's called Show & Hide and it's free.
If you want to go the above posters way there are plenty of free alternatives, Disk Inventory X gives you a graphical view of your files but there are plenty more.
The only problem here is that not all folders are visible.
To make folders visible you can do this in terminal but there is also a tiny program which does this for you, it's called Show & Hide and it's free.
If you want to go the above posters way there are plenty of free alternatives, Disk Inventory X gives you a graphical view of your files but there are plenty more.
Yes it should delete it, but somethings wrong here, just try to find the files first and report where they are here, I suspect in /private/var/root/trash
If they are there though you won't be able to find them since you do not have permissions.
What to do:
Hold Command-Shift-G or Click on Go-Got To Folder... in Finder and type
/private
Then get info on the var Folder, how big is it.
So not there, you already got info on all the other folders, like I said before.
Check each folder at the root level of the disk, if you find a big one go inside and do the same on each folder again until you find the files.
I would start with the Users Folder.
Edit: Now I think of it, if you open Disk Utilities, click on the disk, how much space is free there, is it much different here?
Some people with certain OS X version have bugs and it shows the free space different than in Finder.
Last edited:
You are seeing time-machine local backups in action.
When you delete something, the space is not freed from the time-machine local backup until it is needed.
"About my mac" will show time machine backups.
Use "get info" on your hard disk instead, which will exclude those, as they will be deleted as needed anyway.
When you delete something, the space is not freed from the time-machine local backup until it is needed.
"About my mac" will show time machine backups.
Use "get info" on your hard disk instead, which will exclude those, as they will be deleted as needed anyway.
Last edited:
Use Disk Inventory X --> http://www.derlien.com/screenshots/index.html
It graphs all the files on your harddrive and gives you a better perceptive on what is on it. 100% worth the download.
It graphs all the files on your harddrive and gives you a better perceptive on what is on it. 100% worth the download.
Mobile Sync?
Hey Fellas , first off thank you all for helping me out with this dilemma.
Now here's where I am, I have downloaded Disk Inventory X as recommended by Crzyrio and the biggest red flag to jump out at me right off the bat is the 84.2 GB worth of data residing under the Users folder under Mobile Sync --> Back Up
Are these my Time Machine back ups? I use an external 1TB drive to make my Time Machine back ups as far as I know. Any idea what this is and what to do with it?
Hey Fellas , first off thank you all for helping me out with this dilemma.
Now here's where I am, I have downloaded Disk Inventory X as recommended by Crzyrio and the biggest red flag to jump out at me right off the bat is the 84.2 GB worth of data residing under the Users folder under Mobile Sync --> Back Up
Are these my Time Machine back ups? I use an external 1TB drive to make my Time Machine back ups as far as I know. Any idea what this is and what to do with it?
Erm, by Me first, but I think you didn't read well.
Now, they are most likely Local backups from TimeMachine, I am not a favorite of TM, I use carbon Copy Cloner which has the big advantage of it being bootable while TimeMachine is not.
But, I do find it odd that it is under Mobile Sync, that is normally related to an iPhone or iPad and the like.
My fault
you have recommended one as well...
Any idea why so many back up files would be stored locally? What's the point of that?
Regardless, any idea if I could delete them off my machine?
you have recommended one as well...
Any idea why so many back up files would be stored locally? What's the point of that?
Regardless, any idea if I could delete them off my machine?
First you should go to the next folder.
/Users/****/Library/Application Support/MobileSync
**** = your User name.
Is this folder the one which is really big, just get info on the MobileSync Folder.
Now, if this is the case it has nothing to do with TimeMachine as far as I know.
Do you have an iPhone or iPad, because if you delete the files it might destoy your backup. Edit: I already know you have, it's in your signature.
But, I am not 100% sure why this is so big.
Last edited:
In fact
I have both, an Iphone 5 and a 3rd generation iPad.
I think the biggest problem is not even that folder but the fact that if i delete anything the available HD space never seems to increase even when I delete large files, it just seems to decrease whenever i download anything.
----------
the first thing I tried.
I have both, an Iphone 5 and a 3rd generation iPad.
I think the biggest problem is not even that folder but the fact that if i delete anything the available HD space never seems to increase even when I delete large files, it just seems to decrease whenever i download anything.
----------
the first thing I tried.
I edited my post 2 minutes before your post, it's inside your sig.
You might try my previous suggestion, getting rid of TimeMachine altogether and use Carbon Copy Cloner, little bit of a learning curve but if you run into problems you have a bootable backup, TimeMachine does not allow this.
It also has Scheduling built in and you can set up more than one schedule.
For instance your home folder backs up every hour and every day or week the whole disk backs up.
CCC is free up until 3.4.7
The point is that you can restore files if you delete/overwrite them between time machine backups (e.g. you are at work/school/road trip and accidentally delete a project you were working on. local backups save the day).
They will AUTOMATICALLY be deleted when you run out of space. Until you run out of space, having local backups in between your regular time machine backups can potentially get you out of the poo.
If you really, really want to increase your potential for data loss, you can turn off local backups with
$ sudo tmutil disablelocal
at a terminal prompt.
If you go into iTunes Preferences, devices tab, you can see how many iPhone/iPad backups there are and delete old ones from there. I was surprised how many old backups I had in there.
Late to the thread but with new suggestion
If you want to use TimeMachine happily with the local backups, go to TimeMachine preferences, click on Options, and add folders you want to exclude from backup. I always exclude the Desktop as well as Downloads and any other folders that contain files I have no need to back up.
I get the benefit of TimeMachine for restoring goofs when I'm traveling, but when I get back home and let it perform a "real" TimeMachine backup I then toggle TimeMachine OFF and then ON again which will delete the local backups.
Final remark -- I don't rely on TimeMaachine as my sole backup. I also make SuperDuper! clones and subscribe to CrashPlan. You can't have too many different backups.
If you want to use TimeMachine happily with the local backups, go to TimeMachine preferences, click on Options, and add folders you want to exclude from backup. I always exclude the Desktop as well as Downloads and any other folders that contain files I have no need to back up.
I get the benefit of TimeMachine for restoring goofs when I'm traveling, but when I get back home and let it perform a "real" TimeMachine backup I then toggle TimeMachine OFF and then ON again which will delete the local backups.
Final remark -- I don't rely on TimeMaachine as my sole backup. I also make SuperDuper! clones and subscribe to CrashPlan. You can't have too many different backups.
The problem is not with Time Machine
The problem with not freeing up space no matter what I delete. The HD space keeps going down and still never goes back up no matter how much stuff I delete and that just drives me nuts!!!! Still haven't found a solution, which I find just mind boggling.
The problem with not freeing up space no matter what I delete. The HD space keeps going down and still never goes back up no matter how much stuff I delete and that just drives me nuts!!!! Still haven't found a solution, which I find just mind boggling.
Sounds like either TimeMachine turned on (local backups) or you aren't emptying the Trash. Get Disk Inventory X and see what's using the space. You can examine via the folder hierarchy and your most used file types are color coded.
Example is attached.
EDITED-- looking back at the thread, I see you have already done this and determined that the big usage is in MobileSync. I believe that is where files synced by iCloud are stored locally. It seems inconceivable it would be that big. If you log out of iCloud I would think all those files would be automatically deleted. Time Machine local backups are stored in /.MobileBackups which is normally hidden from viewing.
Attachments
Last edited:
