Missing Storage, where's it gone?

[snerkler]

I've started getting warnings that my start up disk is nearly full, but I've not really added a great deal and last time I looked I had over 120GB free. I have a 1TB SSD and just checked both user accounts and they equate to roughly 680GB used, so where's the rest of my storage gone? I appreciate the OS uses some, but not 330GB I've emptied both trashes (Have 2 user accounts) and now have 21GB free.

I've just used Omnidisk sweeper and here's the results, showing 680GB used.

Here's a screenshot of my hard drive usage, which shows that it still has 1TB capacity so it's not lost storage capacity.

Any help/advice appreciated.

 

[throAU]

It may be time machine local backups.

Do you back up to an external location, and how long has it been? If you haven't connected to your time machine disk, "local" backups of stuff will accumulate. They will be deleted if needed to free space. They'll also be removed once they are copied to your time machine disk.

What does about this mac show under storage?

 

[snerkler]

It may be time machine local backups.

Do you back up to an external location, and how long has it been? If you haven't connected to your time machine disk, "local" backups of stuff will accumulate. They will be deleted if needed to free space. They'll also be removed once they are copied to your time machine disk.

What does about this mac show under storage?

Thanks, last time machine was done about two days ago but running this again as I type to see if it frees some space up. Here's my storage, there's a lot of data being used as other

 

[snerkler]

OK, so running time machine didn't make any difference, although I do have 2 TM drives/backups and the second one is at work and not done for 1 week. Don't know if that will make much difference? I am interested to know what's taking up so much data in "other" though? I'm considering doing a full reinstall of OS yosemite and seeing if that frees up some of the "other" storage, although I might wait for El Capitan and do a fresh install of that. I've been thinking about doing it a while as I've not done a fresh install since Mountain Lion.

 

[throAU]

Do you do iDevice backups to your mac, how many and what size are they?

 

[chabig]

Have you emtied the trash?

 

[Weaselboy]

OK, so running time machine didn't make any difference, although I do have 2 TM drives/backups and the second one is at work and not done for 1 week. Don't know if that will make much difference? I am interested to know what's taking up so much data in "other" though? I'm considering doing a full reinstall of OS yosemite and seeing if that frees up some of the "other" storage, although I might wait for El Capitan and do a fresh install of that. I've been thinking about doing it a while as I've not done a fresh install since Mountain Lion.

Just ignore that storage graphic Other readout. It is notoriously screwed up in Yosemite.

Run the command below in Terminal and post up the results. It will show space used in the base folders in GB, including hidden folders like the one used for Time Machine's local snapshots. This hidden space is not shown in OmniDiskSweeper.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

Backing up to Time Machine does not remove the local snapshots. They will stay there until the disk approaches 80% full, at which time the OS will start to remove them.

 

[Queen6]

Personally I turned off local backups, as I don't use TM and therefore don't see the point of needlessly writing to the SSD`s

Q-6

 

[snerkler]

Do you do iDevice backups to your mac, how many and what size are they?

Yes I do, but don't know and don't know. Where do I find this info?

 

[snerkler]

I'm not on the MB at the mo so can't do the terminal command, will post results later. How do I turn off TM local back ups and where do I find the stored ones?

 

[Queen6]

I'm not on the MB at the mo so can't do the terminal command, will post results later. How do I turn off TM local back ups and where do I find the stored ones?

From Terminal;

Turn off local backups - sudo tmutil disable local

Enable local back ups - sudo tmutil enable local

Your admin password will likely be required. Once you issue the Cmd all local backups will be deleted. So remember, if you disable this feature you will not have local backups anymore, so if something goes wrong you will be out of luck.

Q-6

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm not on the MB at the mo so can't do the terminal command, will post results later. How do I turn off TM local back ups and where do I find the stored ones?

I would hold off on turning off local snapshots until we see from that Terminal command if that is the problem. One of the folders that command will show space used for is the hidden /.MobileBackups folder where the snapshots are stored.

You can zero out the local backups space by just turning Time Machine off then back on if you want.

If you do want to turn off local snapshots entirely, although no real need to IMO, you can run the command below in Terminal.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

 

[Weaselboy]

Yes I do, but don't know and don't know. Where do I find this info?

Triple click the line below to select then right click and in the Services menu and select Reveal in Finder.

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

 

[snerkler]

Triple click the line below to select then right click and in the Services menu and select Reveal in Finder.

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

OK so in mobile backups are 4 folders, totalling 13GB (didn't triple click the link but I know how to access library via the go menu)

 

[snerkler]

I would hold off on turning off local snapshots until we see from that Terminal command if that is the problem. One of the folders that command will show space used for is the hidden /.MobileBackups folder where the snapshots are stored.

You can zero out the local backups space by just turning Time Machine off then back on if you want.

If you do want to turn off local snapshots entirely, although no real need to IMO, you can run the command below in Terminal.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

I don't really want to turn off anything unless I know what they are. Are local snapshots the same as saying TM local backups?

 

[snerkler]

This is the result from the terminal command

Do I need to do anything with terminal now, or can I just close it again?

 

[Weaselboy]

This is the result from the terminal command.

Do I need to do anything with terminal now, or can I just close it again?

You need to wait a minute for the command to finish running. In your screenshot it is still scanning the folders and not done. Once the command is complete and you have pasted the result in here, you can just quit Terminal.

I don't really want to turn off anything unless I know what they are. Are local snapshots the same as saying TM local backups?

Yes... same thing. I agree there is no need to disable this feature.

 

[Weaselboy]

OK so in mobile backups are 4 folders, totalling 13GB (didn't triple click the link but I know how to access library via the go menu)

Open iTunes and in Preferences in the Device tab there will be one backup there for each iOS device you have backed up. You can delete form that list any devices you no longer have to save a little space, but obviously you have something larger going on here.

 

[snerkler]

You need to wait a minute for the command to finish running. In your screenshot it is still scanning the folders and not done. Once the command is complete and you have pasted the result in here, you can just quit Terminal.



Yes... same thing. I agree there is no need to disable this feature.

D'Oh, didn't realise that. Guessing it's finished now

 

[Weaselboy]

Does 613GB sound about right for your personal data in Users?

You have something odd going on there in /System at 246GB. Normally that is around 10GB. Run the command below to drill down in that folder a little to see what is going on.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System

You can keep drilling down by changing up the path at the end of the command there. For example you could change it to /System/Fonts if the first command shows that is where the problem is.

It looks like you have Time Machine turned off, because I don't see a /.MobileBackups folder there at all?

 

[Queen6]

D'Oh, didn't realise that. Guessing it's finished now

Is unusual as system is reporting 246GB and Omnidisk Sweeper reporting 4.3, as per Weaselboy`s post should generally be sub 10Gb, will be interesting to see what develops.

Q-6

 

[snerkler]

Does 613GB sound about right for your personal data in Users?

You have something odd going on there in /System at 246GB. Normally that is around 10GB. Run the command below to drill down in that folder a little to see what is going on.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /System

You can keep drilling down by changing up the path at the end of the command there. For example you could change it to /System/Fonts if the first command shows that is where the problem is.

It looks like you have Time Machine turned off, because I don't see a /.MobileBackups folder there at all?

I have TM set to manual back up. As per my first post I can account for 680GB, but that leaves 320GB that I can't account for (except whatever the OS uses)

So going through what you said about typing the different commands I followed the path in system to Caches and found this. Any idea what this is taking up 242GB?

 

[Weaselboy]

You can kill that by holding command-s at startup to boot to single user mode then run the command below to delete the entire cache folder. Then enter reboot to restart.

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/

You will be asked for your password when you enter this command.

But that does answer why it is happening. I found this talking about Xcode causing it. Are you using Xcode?

See my old post here on this same issue and how to delete the cache files.

Aside from this large folder, I don't see any others that look off from normal. Assuming the Users space is in line with what you have in personal data on there.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is unusual as system is reporting 246GB and Omnidisk Sweeper reporting 4.3, as per Weaselboy`s post should generally be sub 10Gb, will be interesting to see what develops.

Q-6

Omni and other utilities like that run in the User space and can't see those hidden system files. That's why I prefer using Terminal to pin these issues down.

You can actually run Omni as sudo with this line and it will show those hidden system files and folders. I just find it easier over the forums to ask users to copy/paste the text from Terminal.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

 

[Queen6]

Omni and other utilities like that run in the User space and can't see those hidden system files. That's why I prefer using Terminal to pin these issues down.

You can actually run Omni as sudo with this line and it will show those hidden system files and folders. I just find it easier over the forums to ask users to copy/paste the text from Terminal.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

I run Omni etc. from sudo as it tends to speed things up, equally describing via text, Terminal I agree is far easier

Q-6