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missing hard drive space

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clin86

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 15, 2008
127
0
I was wondering if you guys have the same problem, but i'm new to the mac system and when i checked my hard drive it says
used 47.92gb but when i added up everything in the hard drive, it only adds up to around 42gb

system folder: 4gb
Applications folder: 3.2gb
Library folder: 7gb
Users: 28gb

what happened to the other 5gb? i checked in disk utility and it says the same thing too. this is the after formatted info.
Any help would be gladly appreciated.
Thanks
 
clin86 said:
I was wondering if you guys have the same problem, but i'm new to the mac system and when i checked my hard drive it says
used 47.92gb but when i added up everything in the hard drive, it only adds up to around 42gb

system folder: 4gb
Applications folder: 3.2gb
Library folder: 7gb
Users: 28gb

what happened to the other 5gb? i checked in disk utility and it says the same thing too. this is the after formatted info.
Any help would be gladly appreciated.
Thanks
Click to expand...


Do you have Norton Antivirus on the Mac? It sometimes gets out of control on install and devours space creating a "SpaceSuckingFile" but normally takes the disk down to no space at all. It's pretty useless on the Mac other than intending to not share corrupted or otherwise virus files with PCs.

Also, download WhatSize from VersionTracker.com as you could have some rogue system logs out of control taking space. It will give you a display in colors of what is on your disk in colors so you can see where space is used.

My personal favorite is WhatSize as I've used a Mac for a long time and know intuitively if there is excess I can trim. I've also seen some BitTorrent clients go ahead and "reserve" more space than they need for anticipated file downloads that could take days or weeks depending on the file size and bandwidth.
 
nope i have no antivirus software installed. This actually happened on my macbook air too.
 
clin86 said:
nope i have no antivirus software installed. This actually happened on my macbook air too.
Click to expand...

I need to reload my old PBG4 which I "lost" 10GB on last year but quit using it except to attach my USB drive I network to for Time Machine so it wasn't being used that much anyway. While I could be a drive issue, it's only 2 years old so I guess a reformat may fix the issues.

It concerns me to hear you are still having issues on the MBA. Again, I'd try to find some utility to view the hidden documents on your Mac to see where all the space is being eaten up.
 
ahhh you newbies have much to learn about Mac OS X! :p (JK). the remaining space is the invisible unix files in /usr, /bin and /sbin and the swap file which is to amount of RAM you have in /private.

highlighting the System, Applications, Library and Users folders and getting info doesnt calculate the total space used on the hard drive. instead use Disk Utililty or get info on Macintosh HD.
 
so what you're saying is that there are 4-5gb of invisible files? i did check disk utility and it says 29gb used yet what i have on my computer only amounts to 25gb. i initially thought it was for virtual memory but i guess not
 
richthomas said:
ahhh you newbies have much to learn about Mac OS X! :p (JK). the remaining space is the invisible unix files in /usr, /bin and /sbin and the swap file which is to amount of RAM you have in /private.

highlighting the System, Applications, Library and Users folders and getting info doesnt calculate the total space used on the hard drive. instead use Disk Utililty or get info on Macintosh HD.
Click to expand...

I do certainly appreciate your advice, but I do use utilities such at TinkerTool and WhatSize to view hidden files and the sizes. I have no files taking more than a few GBs in the System Folder, Applications, or Users folders, none of which add up anywhere near to 25 of 30GB.

There is no way for me to account for this disk space loss other than situations I have seen in the past with NAV hoarding the disk with useless space on install or possibly part of the drive has gone corrupt (that is, if the OS would recognize that which I am unsure of). My only certainty in the subject is that I didn't write 10GB of files onto a 30GB disk that had stayed around 15GB or 12GB free at the most full in less than 10 minutes one night.
 
Hey, I'm also having this problem now (I realize this thread is over 8 months old).

The problem is on my external USB HDD. I calculated everything by hand, and it gave me a sum of ~68GB. I enabled viewing hidden files and folders in Onyx, highlighted all items, then did a Get Info. The grand total for everything, including hidden files and folders, was 68GB. When I right-click on the disk itself, however, and choose Get Info, it says that 95GB are being used. That's absurd.

Is there a file or something that stores drive data, and maybe somehow the information in this file is messed up?
 
Missing HD space following migration assistant failure/error.

I recently tried to migrate from a new 17" MBP to another new 17" MBP. Migration assistant reported an error, but now 100GB of space is gone. Any idea where I can find this? There is no sign of the files transferred, only the huge reduction in HD space that those files occupied on the old machine.
 
How much RAM? If you have 4GB that accounts for most of your lost space on account of the sleep image.

Edit: I see you've got a very small hard drive. Is this a PowerBook? In that case, the sleep image would only account for up to 1.5Gb.
 
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