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Hard Drive Free Space

S

SgtP3pp3r

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 29, 2011
79
0
Honduras
Ok, i've had this question for a while, and was looking for a thread on the subject but couldn't find one.

Why is it that my Macintosh HD won't update to the actual free space? I mean, some minutes ago it said 83Gb free, and then i promptly deleted over 60Gb of backup files from software downloads i've made over a couple of months (and yes i emptied the trash can), and now it says 88 Gb free...

last time i checked 83 + 60 is not 88.

Why doesn't it update to the actual free amount? I've continued deleting large amounts of data, and it still won't show the space being freed.

Do i have to reboot for it to show? Or is the space not recuperating because something is wrong?

Is this normal???
 
yeah i think time was more of an issue,

i tried rebooting and checked and it said 89 Gb, but 5 mins later i tried again and then it read 155 Gb, so yeah maybe restarting finder might have worked as well.

It sure did take its sweet time updating that :p cleared up those 60 Gb almost 40 mins before the update was shown on its status.
 
I've had the same happen to me on Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion when i delete large amounts of data... but never so "radical" as what happened to you.

The most i've waited for the information in finder to get updated was about 1 minute but never had to restart finder to get it to update the info.
 
Something like this is happening to me.

Selling my 13" MacBook Pro (Work just gave me a 15") and I deleted by old user account after creating a blank 'admin' one. Takes ALL FREAKING NIGHT to delete the user account (deleted home folder securely). I restart it this morning and ... it says there's still tons of crap on the disk.

What gives? How can I actually get rid of this data? Where is it hiding?

Screenshot included.
 

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britboyj said:
Something like this is happening to me.

Selling my 13" MacBook Pro (Work just gave me a 15") and I deleted by old user account after creating a blank 'admin' one. Takes ALL FREAKING NIGHT to delete the user account (deleted home folder securely). I restart it this morning and ... it says there's still tons of crap on the disk.

What gives? How can I actually get rid of this data? Where is it hiding?

Screenshot included.
Click to expand...

wouldnt it be easier to format the hard drive and clean install OS X
 
How do you find how much HD you have left on Lion without Get Info?
When I had Snow Leopard, it showed on the bottom of all finder windows, I can't find any option that will turn it back on?
 
KandyKane said:
How do you find how much HD you have left on Lion without Get Info?
When I had Snow Leopard, it showed on the bottom of all finder windows, I can't find any option that will turn it back on?
Click to expand...
Turn the status bar on. Simple as that. It's in the View menu in Finder.
 
britboyj said:
Is that done via the flash drive approach?
Click to expand...



to be honest ive yet to do it on OSX so i will let someone with more expirece answer, i know on PC it use to be easy

i would boot off the Windows DVD, then during the install you could format the hard drive, create partitions if need than pick the spot you wanted to clean install Windows,

im sure Macs have to be pretty similar

----------
wrldwzrd89 said:
Turn the status bar on. Simple as that. It's in the View menu in Finder.
Click to expand...

cool, what about showing how big a folders contents are without Get Info?
 
maril1111 said:
depends if your laptop came with snow leopard just use the disc to fresh install snow leopard and install lion on top of it, if lion than yes.
Click to expand...

Came with Snow Leopard. Could I boot to recovery, erase with disk utility, then install Lion fresh instead?
 
Darien Red Sox said:
You don't have to install SL first if you install it whale booted from an external disk. When I installed Lion on mine I used a clean install on a new hard drive.
Click to expand...

QFT. I just did it from my recovery partition, disk utility formatted the OS/User Data Partition to blank and then installed Lion clean, just had to sign in to the Mac App store first.

Easiest erase and install I've ever done!
 
britboyj said:
QFT. I just did it from my recovery partition, disk utility formatted the OS/User Data Partition to blank and then installed Lion clean, just had to sign in to the Mac App store first.

Easiest erase and install I've ever done!
Click to expand...



That is a good move.
 
I'm kind of having the same problem as SgtP3pp3r. Last night I was using Quicktime Player 7 to convert a big video file to make it smaller. I deleted the original one which took forever to delete after I tried to empty the trash. Last night I had 279 GB of free space. I go on my Mac today without putting anymore files on it and it shows that I have 254 GB left. I tried to restart but that's not doing anything. Any suggestions?
 
Does Lions new local backup thing associated with Time Machine count against free space on your HD, or is it marked as "free" to the OS?

Also, same question as it pertains to "versions"

These types of "automagic" "the computer knows better than you" types of services can also cause fluctuations in reported free space.

Ruahrc
 
Hugh said:
How big is the new file, it's going to take up space even if you compressed it.

Hugh
Click to expand...

I deleted those video files that were taking up space but it still shows that I have 544 GB on my HD and not around 280 GBs which should have been on there after I deleted those files.
 
Ruahrc said:
Does Lions new local backup thing associated with Time Machine count against free space on your HD, or is it marked as "free" to the OS?

Also, same question as it pertains to "versions"

These types of "automagic" "the computer knows better than you" types of services can also cause fluctuations in reported free space.

Ruahrc
Click to expand...

This is likely whats happening.

The Available space shown in Finder takes into account the free space and the space taken up by "Backups" which can be seen in About this Mac, More info.

The reason is that the space is potentially available as the local Backups are removed once free space gets too low. This is what there is a discrepancy between other programs (including About this Mac, More info) and the Available space Finder reports.

After a while (may be up to a week) the local backups are removed and only stored on the Time Machine backup drive.
 
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