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Mavericks installation freed up 12GB disk space...?

A

Asuriyan

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2013
622
23
Indiana
I intended to perform a clean installation of Mavericks on my rMBP 15", but I decided to try an upgrade and see how it ran.

Unsurprisingly it runs great. Oddly, though, I noticed that I have MORE disk space than I did before the upgrade. I had ~128GB free on my OS X partition pre-upgrade, and I now have 140.2GB free.

I ALWAYS do clean installations so I've never seen this before. I'm kind of stumped. Any suggestions as to where the free space came from? (Regrettably I didn't look at the usage breakdown pre-upgrade so I don't know which category I have less of.)
 
There are a few things that my cause this.

1. Most caches are cleared after installing a new OS. Caches may become quit big after a few months of usage, up to a few GB's.

2. Your hibernation file is deleted after installing a new OS. The hibernation file is used by OSX to store the contents of you memory when you put your mac to sleep for a function called "safe sleep". In case of a power outage your RAM is cleared so your mac will resume from hibernation instead of sleep. So after you put your mac to sleep for the first time, the entire contents of your memory is stored on your disk including the empty space. If you have 8gb of memory installed you will have a hibernation file of 8gb on your disk.

3. In Mountain Lion, Apple has updated Time Machine so it will make local backups while your not connected to you backup-disk. It will keep these backups on your disk until the disk becomes too full so they can become huge. The moment you connect your mac to your backup-disk it will write all these backups to your backup-disk so you won't lose any backup. Chances are you made sure you have a working backup on your backup-disk before you upgraded to mavericks and so your local backups have been cleared.
 
I did not do a backup. "Apps" shrunk

I did check the storage on my device before installing. I also did not do a backup. (I'm a "Maverick.") Looks like my apps shrunk from ~20 GB to 3.5 GB
 
My swap file was previously 8 GB. It is now 1 GB.

My sleep image was previously 8 GB. It is now 1 GB.

I think that is where my extra 14 GB of space came from.
 
Even weirder

I think something really weird has happened. I have used finder, computer information, and 2 third party softwares to verify that upgrading to OS X Maverick has increased my storage space from a measly 20 GB to an immense 200 GB and I have no idea why
 
Upgrade Maverick freed up 20GB for me

Interestingly I upgraded from ML to Maverick on my MacBookAir yesterday, and notice that it have freed up from 8GB to 28GB free space now. Thanks to Apple, and also for the FOC Maverick upgrade.
 
What a pleasant surprise!

I'm using a relatively old MacBook Pro, so HDD space was quite low - hence, I was very reluctant to upgrade from Snow Leopard (after reading forum posts saying that it would take up 10-12GB). Also, I'm somebody who resists upgrades for fear that things will stop working or my HDD space will be drained by "the bloat". In the end, I only upgraded because too much software was becoming incompatible. Freed up 1GB for me - not as much as others, but it sure was a pleasant surprise. I can't notice any loss of performance. And all of my applications work (except for the very old version of Logic Pro I was keeping for no reason at all). So this is some advice for anybody contemplating upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, from somebody who usually avoids upgrading their operating system at all costs: Do it! (Caveat: Your mileage may vary - if you still use a lot of old apps, such as Logic Pro 7, you probably won't want to upgrade.)
 
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