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brm98

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 16, 2016
4
1
So I've been all over the place (internet, youtube, etc.) trying everything I can find to remove the 140GB of "other" taking up space on my HD.

Screen%20Shot%202016-06-15%20at%2010.49.06%20AM.png


I've upgraded to El Capitan, removed iMessage attachments, verify and repair permissions, run Clean My Mac, deleted any iPhone apps, removed any iPhone backups and many other attempts to figure out just what is causing this?

anyone have any suggestions? my head is starting to bruise from beating it against the desk.
 
Check garageband and ilife applications, check hidden files, check if you use itunes if there are dublicates, itunes sometimes copies the files to a folder and keeps the original.
 
I've removed garageband and life applications. Did that a while ago.

how would I go about checking hidden files?
 
anyone have any suggestions?

That storage readout is notoriously screwed up and almost always wrong. So ignoring the categories, does around 186GB space used sound about right for your system?

You can run the command below in Terminal to reindex Spotlight and that may make the storage readout more accurate for a while. Give the command 20-30 minutes to finish the reindex.

Code:
sudo mdutil -E /

I see there there is some space used by Backups. That is space used by Time Machine's local snapshots, and unless you just turned on Time Machine two minutes ago, I guarantee you it is using more than 56MB shown there.

If you like, you can run the command below in Terminal and the output back here for us to look at. This will show the space used by each of the base folders, including system and hidden folders. Give it a couple minutes to finish.

Code:
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /
 
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That storage readout is notoriously screwed up and almost always wrong. So ignoring the categories, does around 186GB space used sound about right for your system?

You can run the command below in Terminal to reindex Spotlight and that may make the storage readout more accurate for a while. Give the command 20-30 minutes to finish the reindex.

Code:
sudo mdutil -E /

I see there there is some space used by Backups. That is space used by Time Machine's local snapshots, and unless you just turned on Time Machine two minutes ago, I guarantee you it is using more than 56MB shown there.

If you like, you can run the command below in Terminal and the output back here for us to look at. This will show the space used by each of the base folders, including system and hidden folders. Give it a couple minutes to finish.

Code:
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /


Awesome!!! thanks for the assist.

I honeslty can't see where I have 186GB on this machine. Don't keep a lot of photos or music on here and I have a few gopro movies but only about 5-6GB worth.

working on step one now. As soon as that is done I will run the second code and report back
[doublepost=1466106049][/doublepost]After reindexing the "other" category increased.

Screen%20Shot%202016-06-16%20at%203.35.51%20PM.png


So moving to step 2 and here is the list:

Screen%20Shot%202016-06-16%20at%203.34.17%20PM.png
 
Are you sure you let the Spotlight reindex finish? It looks like maybe it did not.

I don't see anything out of line with those folder sizes, but you do have 135GB in your user folder. Does that sound off?

You can drill down a little more with this command.

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

Since it now all looks like the big hogs are in the users space, you would be able to see it with a GUI utility like OmniDisksweeper.
 
Are you sure you let the Spotlight index finish? It looks like maybe it did not.

I don't see anything out of line with those folder sizes, but you do have 135GB in your user folder. Does that sound off?

You can drill down a little more with this command.

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

Since it now all looks like the big hogs are in the users space, you would be able to see it with a GUI utility like OmniDisksweeper.


I will run that again and give it more time.

I guess each little bit adds up. I will look into OmniDisk and see what it comes up with.

Thanks again for all the help!!!
 
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