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My hard drive is missing space!!

appledyl

appledyl

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 20, 2009
117
0
USA
My 500 GB external hard drive is filled up with 200 GB of files, (hidden and unhidden) but when I look at how much space is left it says there are only 30 GB free! I do know for a fact that my friend copied some files onto there with 'super user access', but they aren't showing up! How do I get that space back (without formatting it) soon? :(
 
double check how large the partition is. It's possible it's divided into more than one partition or that the mounted partition isn't the full size of the drive. At any rate, a 500gb drive should give you somewhere around 465gb of real storage.

If you're really at a loss, you can open up the terminal and issue:
Code: 
sudo du -hs /Volumes/[B]DriveName[/B]/

It should return something like "435G /Volume/DriveName" which tells you for sure it has 435gb of data.
If you put a * after the last slash, it will tell you each file/directory and how large it is:
Code: 
sudo du -hs /Volumes/DriveName/[B]*[/B]

sudo lets you run a command as a super user, to see ALL files.
du gives you the current disk usage
-hs outputs a summary in human readable format

Finally, it wouldn't hurt to do a "df -h" from terminal as well, to see how the system is reporting how large the volume is and percent full.
 
in disk utility there's one big partition of 465 GB and only 28 GB are free.
 
appledyl said:
in disk utility there's one big partition of 465 GB and only 28 GB are free.
Click to expand...

Then there's definitely 437gb of data somewhere on the drive. I suggest going to the terminal and doing "du -hs" on several directories to find out where it's being used.
 
Is it possible that the G4 won't recognize a drive this big and is only showing what it recognizes? Just a thought.
 
Each directory was the right amount of memory it should be, but it still adds up to 200 GB. Is it possible to get to superuser access without the password? I'm so confused.....

mojohanna said:
Is it possible that the G4 won't recognize a drive this big and is only showing what it recognizes? Just a thought.
Click to expand...

erm... Before my friend took it, the hard drive wasn't missing all this memory.
 
Illicit said:
couldn't you just ask your friend where he copied the files?
Click to expand...

He says they're on there hidden in 'super user' form but he won't tell me the password and he's been endlessly avoiding me for that reason.
 
appledyl said:
Each directory was the right amount of memory it should be, but it still adds up to 200 GB. Is it possible to get to superuser access without the password? I'm so confused.....
Click to expand...

IIRC, if your users is an "admin" on the computer you can use superuser privs by issuing "sudo" before the command (in terminal). Sorry for my insistence on terminal, but I'm a unix geek so it's my nature.

When you issue a sudo command it prompts you for YOUR password, not the superuser's (root) password. Type in the same password you use when you do software updates or installers.

If your user isn't an admin on the machine then I would go about making it one. In my experience, outside of disk failures, root can always see every file on the disk. There's no such thing as "hiding" it from root's eyes, only removing the inode from the allocation table, in which even the system would report it as free bits (empty space).

If your friend works for the NSA, however, all bets are off. ;)
 
appledyl said:
He says they're on there hidden in 'super user' form but he won't tell me the password and he's been endlessly avoiding me for that reason.
Click to expand...

What kind of 'friend' hides things on YOUR computer and won't give you the password? Tell him to give you the password or he never gets near your computer again.
 
have you tried onyx ? Sometimes OSX mysteriously losing all your free HDD space, onyx maintenance sometimes can correct the problem.
 
If you have an external backup drive (which you should), I'd copy only your files to the external, reformat the drive and reinstall everything, then copy your files back. I'd also never let your friend touch your computer again. The reformat would not only get rid of the "hidden" files, but anything else your "friend" might have done to your computer without your knowledge or approval.

One of the reasons I've never had a virus or security breach in the last 25+ years of using personal computers is I allow NO ONE to touch my computer, unless I'm standing there, watching everything.
 
mojohanna said:
Is it possible that the G4 won't recognize a drive this big and is only showing what it recognizes? Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Are you trying to confuse the lad with your BS comments? :confused: There's no artificial hard drive limitations on a G4 machine.
 
ppl, dont jump on his friend before we know for sure what happened.

its not the first time OSX mysteriously missing HDD spaces anyway.

its not the place for us who knows a small bit of information to suggest for other people's life.
 
clevin said:
ppl, dont jump on his friend before we know for sure what happened.

its not the first time OSX mysteriously missing HDD spaces anyway.

its not the place for us who knows a small bit of information to suggest for other people's life.
Click to expand...


The OP already said his friend put stuff on the drive and won't give him the password. This totally justifies all the suggestions for wiping the drive; the disk belongs to the OP, not the friend.
 
Wotan31 said:
Are you trying to confuse the lad with your BS comments? :confused: There's no artificial hard drive limitations on a G4 machine.
Click to expand...

WRONG

Only 2002 Quicksilver G4s and onwards can recognise drives larger than 137Gb/128Gb formatted. Earlier G4 models couldn't without using a 3rd party PCI controller card. There's some info on the Apple site to support that fact here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2544

There is however a software solution that enables 48 bit addressing on older macs that DO NOT HAVE BUILT IN SUPPORT FOR LBA-48:

http://mac.profusehost.net/overdrive/index.html

This is a limitation of the internal ATA bus, not the firewire/usb ports though
 
Open Terminal

Browse to the disk in question

Type "ls -la" (copy and paste everything between the speech marks)

Does that show the files? The hidden files will be represented by have a "." at the beginning. That command will also show permissions
 
Duff-Man says....if you're not used to using the terminal and want to see the hidden files you can use a utility like TinkerTool to show/hide them in the finder. It's free and does lots of other handy little tweaks as well that you may find useful...oh yeah!
 
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