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Missing hard drive space

J

johnnyyt

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2013
67
0
i recently installed windows 8 on my rMBP15 using parallels. i have games that i can only run on pc. a friend of mine told me that if i'm just going to be using it for gaming, i should just install windows using boot camp instead.

so i uninstalled parallels and the virtual machine but when i took a look at my drive space, i was still missing the chunk (30gb) that i partitioned to use for windows. now its saying that i have 76gb being used in "other". how do i get my drive space back?!?!

anyone question, i have the base rMBP15 that comes with a 250gb drive.
when i check the system report or drive utility, it says i have 250gb but when i look at the storage menu in system report, it says i only have 225gb to use..where did my 25gb go? it wasn't like this before
 
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML storage tab is about, this may help explain:
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 or later, space may be consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.

  • Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.

  • Check the System Memory tab in Activity Monitor to check page outs and swap used. If swap used is significant, restart your computer and track that value under your normal workload. If you have significant page outs under normal use, you could benefit from more RAM.

  • 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.
    attachment.php
  • 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:
Freeing up space in Mac OS X

How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
 
maflynn said:
Download and run OmniDiskSweeper It will provide a sorted list of files/folders that are consuming your disk space
Click to expand...

i haven't tried using omnidisksweeper yet but i've used similar programs, disk inventory x and grandperspective which pretty much do the same. grandperspective told me that i have a little over 40gb of "miscellaneous used space"

how do i get this back or at least find out whats eatting up my storage space?

----------
GGJstudios said:
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML storage tab is about, this may help explain:
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:
Freeing up space in Mac OS X

How OS X and iOS report storage capacity
Click to expand...

i stumbled across this exact posting last night and i've tried all the suggestions. when i look at the system report, it says i have 76gb of "other" but grandperspective tells me that i have 40gb of "miscellaneous" stuff so im guessing the 36gb or so are system files. i just wan to know where the 40gb are going
 
johnnyyt said:
i stumbled across this exact posting last night and i've tried all the suggestions. when i look at the system report, it says i have 76gb of "other" but grandperspective tells me that i have 40gb of "miscellaneous" stuff so im guessing the 36gb or so are system files. i just wan to know where the 40gb are going
Click to expand...
As that post suggests, try several of those apps, as they don't all report the same level of detail.
 
GGJstudios said:
As that post suggests, try several of those apps, as they don't all report the same level of detail.
Click to expand...

im not at home right now but i was working on this all night last night and it seems that alot of people are having the same issue as i am when uninstalling parallels.
 
GGJstudios said:
It may be you haven't completely uninstalled all components. The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:
Click to expand...

its funny because that was exactly how i deleted the program..but i think that may be the reason why i have all of this unaccounted drive usage. i was reading on a few other forums that i shouldve uninstalled virtual machines and then parallels using their uninstaller, rather than just searching for the files and deleting them
 
johnnyyt said:
its funny because that was exactly how i deleted the program..but i think that may be the reason why i have all of this unaccounted drive usage. i was reading on a few other forums that i shouldve uninstalled virtual machines and then parallels using their uninstaller, rather than just searching for the files and deleting them
Click to expand...
For some apps it makes sense to use the uninstaller, then follow up with the manual method to catch things the uninstaller missed.
 
GGJstudios said:
For some apps it makes sense to use the uninstaller, then follow up with the manual method to catch things the uninstaller missed.
Click to expand...

with that being said, is there anyway i can get back my lost space? i've completely removed everything related to parallels manually already
 
so i ended up going to the apple store and talking to one of the geniuses..big help

i spoke to him and explained what happened and all he could say was, "i dont know whats wrong". all he instructed me to do was to erase and reinstall osx and it SHOULD be fine again.
 
johnnyyt said:
so i ended up going to the apple store and talking to one of the geniuses..big help

i spoke to him and explained what happened and all he could say was, "i dont know whats wrong". all he instructed me to do was to erase and reinstall osx and it SHOULD be fine again.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good idea. Just use your TM backup to restore and you'll be up and running in no time.
 
it worked out afterall

i deleted the bootcamp partition and restored it to 1 partition.
erased all the info and reinstalled mac osx back onto that partition and i got back my hard drive space

im still wondering what was occupying all that space though..
 
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