Missing hard drive space after empty Trash bin?

[BB.King]

I got this strange problem on my retina macbook pro. I deleted around 80Gb of videos and emptied the Trash bin. However, even through Finder shows there are 197Gb of free space, Disk Utility only shows there are 113 Gb of free space.

Istat menus also shows 113Gb free, but MacKeeper Disk Usage only shows I used 25.4GB.

So can somebody help me to recovery the 80Gb of missing of space please, I don't want to restore from Time Machine backup.

Many thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

Are you running Time Machine (I suspect you are)? If you are it creates temp local backups in /MobileBackups when you are away from your normal backup destination. That space is not included in the Finder space available, but is included in the Disk Util space available and often accounts for the difference.

Go to Apple button at top left, then About this Mac, then More Info, then Storage and look at Backups like in my screenshot. The amount shown there is what is used for local backups and should exactly match difference you are seeing between Finder and Disk Util.

If you turn Time Machine off then back on it will zero this space for now. You really don't need to do this though, as Lion manages this space and will shrink it if you need the disk space for storage. I would just leave it alone.

It can be useful if you accidentally delete a file while away from your Time Machine backup drive.

 

[GGJstudios]

I got this strange problem on my retina macbook pro. I deleted around 80Gb of videos and emptied the Trash bin. However, even through Finder shows there are 197Gb of free space, Disk Utility only shows there are 113 Gb of free space.

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

MacKeeper Disk Usage only shows I used 25.4GB.

I recommend you uninstall MacKeeper, as it has a terrible reputation. It's basically useless and has been known to create problems for users. You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Some remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. Some of these apps delete caches, which can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​