Issue with disk space

[clabapple]

Hey all,

I have a 2010 15" unibody macbook pro. I recently put in a 120gb solid state that just runs applications (with a separate internal HDD for everything else). I've been cruising along smoothly until today when I went to install Logic. Logic is a hard-drive hog at 50+ gb, and I noticed I didn't have enough space on my system drive (only 45gb of available space).

It seems weird to me since I barely have anything on the system drive other than the OS and applications. I checked under about this mac, and it looks like I have 57gb of "other". Not sure what this could be? I've gone through all the folders on the system drive and I can't account for this 57 gb.

Am I missing something here? Any help is much appreciated.

 

[simonsi]

TM local backups? Have you restarted? Same?

 

[clabapple]

TM local backups? Have you restarted? Same?

Not sure how to check for local backups. I did see something about that and plugged in time machine to no avail. I also saw something about device backups in iTunes but nothing there either.

I ended up running omnidisksweeper and found out that apple mail is taking up 13gb so I think that's likely the culprit. I like having offline access to old emails and being able to search quickly so not sure I want to mess with that.

Still there's something a bit weird. Finder says I have 48gb free, but storage (under "about my mac") and disk utility are both showing 32gb. I tried to install Logic (limited it to a 35gb install) and it's saying not enough room. Not sure what's going on there.

 

[simonsi]

Turn OFF TM, wait 5mins, Turn ON (won't disturb your already-taken TM Backups), reboot, see if figures now agree, that will temporarily wipe out any Local TM backups. May also sort out any other random space discrepancies too...

 

[maflynn]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

If you run it with sudo (As shown below), it will include some system files that it woud not normally have access to scan. That is a more accurate representation of what's consuming your drive.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Another option is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Like the sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper command, it will scan all directories, but produce a text file as opposed to showing the results in a window

As mentioned if you have TimeMachine enabled then most of the space could very well be local snapshots. The steps above are ways to see the details of what is consuming your space.