Macbook Giving the Almost full when it still has 600gb left

[Murrtallica]

I've ran into a problem with my Macbook Pro (late 2011) where it was giving the "your startup disk is almost full" window when i have a good 600GB or so available. I scanned it with a disk scanner and it added up to about 160 used, even though the mac its self says theres 643GB used. I cleaned cashes ETC. with no luck other than a quicker boot time (Need to clean my caches more apparently) is this an OS bug, possibly a hidden 500gb file i cant find? Any help would be.. well really helpful!
-Stefan



Specs if you need them Late 2011 Macbook Pro 17" with 750GB drive and 4gb ram Running 10.7.3

 

[GGJstudios]

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
• 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

 

[Murrtallica]

It seems with scans and other searches there is still the mystery 'other' section that has 528gb used. Any ideas as to what or where these files are?

 

[GGJstudios]

It seems with scans and other searches there is still the mystery 'other' section that has 528gb used. Any ideas as to what or where these files are?

Did you read all the links I posted? The first one explains what's included in "other".

 

[Murrtallica]

Totally missed that one - my bad.

 

[Murrtallica]

Still not able to track down the space consuming files. It almost seems to be the opposite - the space i have used is the space the mac is saying i have free.

 

[Mumford]

Still not able to track down the space consuming files. It almost seems to be the opposite - the space i have used is the space the mac is saying i have free.

Download and run Disk Inventory X. It'll show you graphically where your space is being used.

 

[Murrtallica]

Actually disk inventory x was the first thing I used. I've noticed it seems used space has been confused with empty space on the HD. I live a few miles from an apple store, so I might take it in sometime soon. Until then keep hitting me with advice, i really appreciate it!

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Oh forgot to say that inventory x shows I've only used about 150gb or so and the mystery 500 is not appearing.

 

[Mumford]

Not sure what more advice we can give. Any chance you can post the Disk Inventory X screenshot? Otherwise it'd be best just to wait for the Genius.

 

[Freyqq]

It seems with scans and other searches there is still the mystery 'other' section that has 528gb used. Any ideas as to what or where these files are?

other are files that dont fit in the other categories. That's pretty broad.

 

[Murrtallica]

here you go.

 

[markintosh]

Idea

I ran into something similar....

Do you have any virtual machines?

I found that if I had a vm that I had devoted 100gb to, that was what it showed used. Even if the actual vm only had say 20gb used.

Just a thought.

 

[Murrtallica]

I do have a windows VMWare file but it only goes up to 100gb and shows its at about 40gb right now

 

[Mumford]

Hmm, a VM image could be the cause. A lot of VM programs (VMware, Parallels, etc) allow you to create a disk image as a sparse file. They do this for a few reasons:

• space - if you ask for a 100GB disk, it won't actually allocate a full 100GB until you use all that space. There's no reason to allocate the full 100GB (yet) when only the OS has been installed (taking up 3GB)
• performance - it takes a long time to create an empty 100GB file, even on modern disks