Hard drive space question?

[neverendingscot]

I have a MacBook Pro and I am confused on how much hard drive space I have left.

The icon on the desktop for my hard drive says I have 61.42 available (out of 120.12) and 58.71 used. When I open disk doctor, it says I have 21.9 free and 98.2 used.

So how much do I actually have free??

 

[simonsi]

Better to use something like Omnidisk Sweeper or Whatsize to tell you what the difference is and how your space is being taken up. It maybe an error or certain kinds of local Time Machine snapshots (which will be removed if space is needed).

 

[neverendingscot]

Downloaded Omnidisk, it's giving me the lower number for free space. I don't get it. Why is the hard drive icon saying I have way more than that? I don't have any time machine backups or anything like that.

It says I have 120.1 GB of "mobile backups", my hard drive is only 120.1 GB. What the heck is that? Is it safe to delete?

 

[JTToft]

Disk Utility will give you the guaranteed correct numbers.

 

[neverendingscot]

I figured it out. I did a terminal command to disable the local backups and turned off time machine (since I don't use it and never set it up in the first place). Now Omni Disk and Disk Utility are giving me the same high number my hard drive icon is giving me. Geez that local backup/time machine junk was taking u a whole lot of space on my hard drive!

Thanks for the help!

 

[TheIguana]

MobileBackups are kept on device as a convenience feature. If you accidentally delete a file during the day and are away from your main backup drive you can still restore it via this. If you start using more space on your drive OS X will automatically delete these backups first.

since I don't use it and never set it up in the first place

On another note, I'm going to be that annoying IT person, but everyone should have a backup. There are too many ways technology can fail and losing data truly sucks these days. I've had plenty of students come up to me with tears and broken computers stating why they can't hand their report in on time. It doesn't need to be Time Machine but you should have a system of some kind in place.

 

[neverendingscot]

MobileBackups are kept on device as a convenience feature. If you accidentally delete a file during the day and are away from your main backup drive you can still restore it via this. If you start using more space on your drive OS X will automatically delete these backups first.



On another note, I'm going to be that annoying IT person, but everyone should have a backup. There are too many ways technology can fail and losing data truly sucks these days. I've had plenty of students come up to me with tears and broken computers stating why they can't hand their report in on time. It doesn't need to be Time Machine but you should have a system of some kind in place.

Everything important I keep a copy on an external hard drive, Dropbox, or Google Drive. My music is all uploaded to Google Music as well. And since I use this machine some for work, everything I do for work is stored on the school's network.

If something should happen to this computer and I lose everything stored on the drive, I'm not losing anything important.

 

[Weaselboy]

I figured it out. I did a terminal command to disable the local backups and turned off time machine (since I don't use it and never set it up in the first place). Now Omni Disk and Disk Utility are giving me the same high number my hard drive icon is giving me. Geez that local backup/time machine junk was taking u a whole lot of space on my hard drive!

Thanks for the help!

You can leave Time Machine on and just ignore that local backups space used. The OS will start to delete those files as the disk becomes full. You can read more about it here.

 

[Mr.C]

You can leave Time Machine on and just ignore that local backups space used. The OS will start to delete those files as the disk becomes full. You can read more about it here.

Thanks for the link. It made things much clearer for me regards the local Time Machine snap shots.