Help - Misc Used Space

[7535862]

Hello,

Something is chewing up my hard drive, and I don't know how to fix it.

Running 10.9.5, 2011 MacBook Pro 17", 2.2 GHz i7, 8GB RAM, 750 GB hard drive.

Finder tells me that I have 31 GB of space left on my hard drive (left side in screenshot).

I did "Get Info" on every folder, and they do not add up to anything close to using that much space.

GrandPerspective tells me 478 GB is used up in Miscellaneous Used Space (window on the right in screenshot).

System Profiler tells me that 587 GB is used for "Other" (center-top in screenshot).

I ran "sudo du -cxhd 1 /" in the Terminal, which revealed that /System is using 481 GB (center-bottom in screenshot), however, Finder tells me that /System is only using 5.73 GB (second from left side in screenshot).

Rebooting did not fix this problem. Trash is empty.

A few days ago, I had a problem with my external Time Machine backup drive spontaneously disconnecting during backup. I wonder if there are corrupted Time Machine backups somewhere in the system, but I am unable to find any.

Can anyone help me figure out what is eating up all this hard drive space and how can I delete it?

 

[GGJstudios]

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space​

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.
  About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs​
• 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.
  
• 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:

• Encrypted drive
• Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
• App filling log file
• App or file was 89GB
• Drive needed to be re-indexed
• Time Machine backup file
• Large app cache file
• Garageband files and video podcasts
• Oversized email being duplicated
• Another email issue
• 18.45EB of movies shown
• Duplicate movies in iPhoto app

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

 

[Weaselboy]

I ran "sudo du -cxhd 1 /" in the Terminal, which revealed that /System is using 481 GB (center-bottom in screenshot), however, Finder tells me that /System is only using 5.73 GB (second from left side in screenshot).

You have something odd going on there in /System with that 481GB used.

First let's check your disk. Do a command-r boot into recovery and from there use Disk Utility to do a repair disk. Does that show anything? While you are still in recovery, what does Disk Util say for disk space used?

Then restart and see if the issue still exists. If it does run the commands below in Terminal one after the other to drill down a little into /System to see if any large folders jump out at you.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System/Library

 

[7535862]

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain...

Not helpful.

You have something odd going on there in /System with that 481GB used.

First let's check your disk. Do a command-r boot into recovery and from there use Disk Utility to do a repair disk. Does that show anything? While you are still in recovery, what does Disk Util say for disk space used?

Then restart and see if the issue still exists. If it does run the commands below in Terminal one after the other to drill down a little into /System to see if any large folders jump out at you.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System/Library

Thanks for the reply.

I did a CMD-r reboot and disk repair. Disk Utility said Macintosh HD appears ok, but that over 719 GB is being used.

Rebooting did not fix it.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System in Terminal yielded:

485 /System/Library
485 /System
485 total

See first screenshot attached to this post.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System/Library in Terminal yielded a long list of directories, including this:

481 /System/Library/Caches

See second screenshot attached to this post.

I suspect this is the problem, but whatever it is in the Caches directory seems to be hidden from me in Finder.

 

[Weaselboy]

481 /System/Library/Caches

Theres the problem. No idea why this has happened, but run the command below in Terminal to clear that whole cache folder then reboot.

sudo rm -r /System/Library/Caches

 

[7535862]

Theres the problem. No idea why this has happened, but run the command below in Terminal to clear that whole cache folder then reboot.

sudo rm -r /System/Library/Caches

Yay! It worked! I have over 546 GB free now. Thank you!

 

[Weaselboy]

Yay! It worked! I have over 546 GB free now. Thank you!

You are quite welcome. Everybody loves a happy ending!

 

[cphaneuf84]

I'm also down to about 10GB of space, ran some of the commands below but I don't usually run terminal commands so I'm unsure of what I'm looking at.

424K /.DocumentRevisions-V100
68K /.fseventsd
0B /.PKInstallSandboxManager
495M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
5.6G /Applications
2.3M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
1.0K /home
4.6G /Library
1.0K /net
1.0K /Network
4.4G /private
1012K /sbin
4.1G /System
426G /Users
608M /usr
9.4M /Volumes
446G /
446G total

My problem is obviously the 446G/ how do I locate or clear it?

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm also down to about 10GB of space, ran some of the commands below but I don't usually run terminal commands so I'm unsure of what I'm looking at.

424K /.DocumentRevisions-V100
68K /.fseventsd
0B /.PKInstallSandboxManager
495M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
5.6G /Applications
2.3M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
1.0K /home
4.6G /Library
1.0K /net
1.0K /Network
4.4G /private
1012K /sbin
4.1G /System
426G /Users
608M /usr
9.4M /Volumes
446G /
446G total

My problem is obviously the 446G/ how do I locate or clear it?

That 446GB is just the total space used. Looks like the bulk of the space used is the 426GB in your /Users folder. Assuming you are the only user, from with that account run the command below in Terminal and it will show you which folders in your user account are using all that space, then you can see what is going on.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

Since this is in the users space, you should also be able to see what is using the space using a GUI tool like OmniDiskSweeper

 

[rastro4]

This was super helpful. I was having the same problem, and clearing the system/library/caches totally solved it. Just wondering (for those of you who also had this problem): Once you clear the cache, is the problem gone forever? Or do I need to keep checking in on it. Thanks, Joe

 

[trenchkilt]

Hello,

Something is chewing up my hard drive, and I don't know how to fix it.

Running 10.9.5, 2011 MacBook Pro 17", 2.2 GHz i7, 8GB RAM, 750 GB hard drive.

Finder tells me that I have 31 GB of space left on my hard drive (left side in screenshot).

I did "Get Info" on every folder, and they do not add up to anything close to using that much space.

GrandPerspective tells me 478 GB is used up in Miscellaneous Used Space (window on the right in screenshot).

System Profiler tells me that 587 GB is used for "Other" (center-top in screenshot).

I ran "sudo du -cxhd 1 /" in the Terminal, which revealed that /System is using 481 GB (center-bottom in screenshot), however, Finder tells me that /System is only using 5.73 GB (second from left side in screenshot).

Rebooting did not fix this problem. Trash is empty.

A few days ago, I had a problem with my external Time Machine backup drive spontaneously disconnecting during backup. I wonder if there are corrupted Time Machine backups somewhere in the system, but I am unable to find any.

Can anyone help me figure out what is eating up all this hard drive space and how can I delete it?

I resolved this issue by deleting all antivirus softwares except for one (Avast). I had multiple antivirus softwares running which were the cause of the extra files being created. System has been running without issue since. Hope this helps.