I'm having trouble accounting for all my hard drive space - help!

[johnbro23]

I was trying to clean out my hard drive today, since I've only got 14 GB left on an 80 GB hard drive. But I went through my folders and found that it doesn't all add up to 80GB. I know Mac OSX takes up 5 or so GB, but I had only 23 GB under my home folder (which has all my movies, pictures and music) and only 18 GB in Applications. I'm pretty sure Applications is the only thing that isn't included in the home folder, but I'm not quite sure because that doesn't add up to 80 GB.

80 - 5 - 23 - 18 -14(that I have left)= 22 GB unaccounted for.

I'm the only one that uses this computer, so its not in another user. Any ideas?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

1. An 80 GB harddrive isn't 80 GB... more like 74.5...

2. Open Terminal.app, type: open /var

3. Check if there's any folders there which is very large, particular the /var/vm/ folder. In that you should find a couple of large swapfile's, but if some of them are VERY large (several GBs) or you have LOTS of them, then something's wrong...

4. Also see if the /var/tmp/ folder is very large...

 

[johnbro23]

I just found somewhere where I hadn't looked before... previous systems. It says I have 4 of them, and they're 3 GB a peice. That could be part of the problem. Do I need these "previous systems"?

 

[vocaro]

I was trying to clean out my hard drive today, since I've only got 14 GB left on an 80 GB hard drive. But I went through my folders and found that it doesn't all add up to 80GB.

Use WhatSize to help figure out what exactly is using all the space on your drive.

 

[yellow]

"Previous System" is created when you do an Archive & Install. If you're running normally and you don't miss anything from those previous installs, then you can remove them, the current OS isn't referencing them in any way. However you might want to go through them and make sure you're not trashing anything you need.

Please remember that there are quite a few invisible directories that you aren't accounting for as space takers when you add up the size of the folders you see in the Finder. /usr, /private, /bin, /sbin, to name a few..

 

[johnbro23]

Thanks for the help... I just removed the Previous Systems. It took about a half hour (it was 12GB) but it worked.

Is there anywhere else that might need some cleaning up?

 

[musicpyrite]

Delocalizer will remove any unneeded languages... saves roughly 500 MB.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Restarting clears out temporary files and reduces your swapfile's size a bit. Good to do every once and a while unless you want a record uptime.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Delocalizer will remove any unneeded languages... saves roughly 500 MB.

Actually, it took 950 MB of my iBook, and over 1000 MB from my girlfriends Pismo...

Just be careful if you have any non-English software... as I for some insane reason had OS 9 installed in Norwegian, deleted all languages except 'Norwegian' (and forgot to check the 'no' options, deleting all of those), so after that Classic stopped working... Haven't bothered to reinstall as I only used it to play MOO, but still: Be careful...