macbook air "other" storage

[AznTakumi]

I just wanted to know how big is everyone's "other" on there storage?
Mine is 15.13gb.

 

[GGJstudios]

I just wanted to know how big is everyone's "other" on there storage?
Mine is 15.13gb.

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion 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, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.
  OS X Lion: 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

 

[silverjam]

My Other is 51.84GB.

But I think it is that big because of Parallels.

 

[theSeb]

My Other is 51.84GB.

But I think it is that big because of Parallels.

My other on the MBA is 30.3 GB. It's meaningless to compare against other users. We might as well be comparing shoe sizes.

 

[silverjam]

My other on the MBA is 30.3 GB. It's meaningless to compare against other users. We might as well be comparing shoe sizes.

I agree.

Other does't mean anything. It simply means the files that don't fall within the standard categories the OSX came up with. They are still mostly App related files such as my Parallels.

 

[theSeb]

I agree.

Other does't mean anything. It simply means the files that don't fall within the standard categories the OSX came up with. They are still mostly App related files such as my Parallels.

It depends. Most of what is reported as other is usually the operating system itself (for most users).

 

[oneMadRssn]

I have almost 75GB of 'other', which is mostly .mkv rips of movies which OSX doesn't realize is a movie.

 

[theSeb]

I have almost 75GB of 'other', which is mostly .mkv rips of movies which OSX doesn't realize is a movie.

That's exactly what I was referring to above by the qualifier "most users". If OSX does not recognise the file into the user friendly categories, then it lumps it into "Other". Most users don't keep mkv files. I happen to have 3.5 TBs of them.

 

[7010]

So the "other" files contain all the OS files as well, right? What's the absolute minimum of "other" files?

Because 2 days ago I had just 270 MB of "other". This must have been a bug if it also contains the OSX files, correct?

But I had 20 GB of Video, which was about 15 GB too much. As I spent an hour to search for these supposed videos I found them in Spotlight. They were aliases of videos that I had in the past removedthat I couldn't remove. Then they suddenly disappeared, now I have 5gb of video but 15gb of other. And I can't for the life of me find these files anymore.

I am confused.