My hard drive is missing space!!

[Rizvi1]

I'm having the same problem. I have a 320gb External Hard Drive. On Disk Utility, it comes in at a total capacity of 298.1gb. It's saying right now that I have 52.21gb available which should mean I have used around 245ish gb. well sudo du -hs on my volume says I have used 244gb. I have 4 folders with one being 148.4gb, the other being 7.53gb, the other one just a few megabytes,and the last one empty.

sudo du -hs with a * on my volume lists out 10 folders. Of these 10:
-3 are empty (cores and network and the folder I mentioned above
- 2 are just a few kb (Desktop DF, Desktop DB)
- 3 have a few megs (bin, mach_kernel, and the one I mentioned above)
- 2 have the gigabytes of data (both mentioned above)

I guess I have to reformat.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I'm having the same problem. I have a 320gb External Hard Drive. On Disk Utility, it comes in at a total capacity of 298.1gb. It's saying right now that I have 52.21gb available which should mean I have used around 245ish gb. well sudo du -hs on my volume says I have used 244gb. I have 4 folders with one being 148.4gb, the other being 7.53gb, the other one just a few megabytes,and the last one empty.

sudo du -hs with a * on my volume lists out 10 folders. Of these 10:
-3 are empty (cores and network and the folder I mentioned above
- 2 are just a few kb (Desktop DF, Desktop DB)
- 3 have a few megs (bin, mach_kernel, and the one I mentioned above)
- 2 have the gigabytes of data (both mentioned above)

I guess I have to reformat.

What two folders? You should have a minimum of four folders on the root of your drive larger than a gigabyte: Applications, Library, System, and Users

In my case,

Applications is 10.28 GB
Library is 14.47 GB
System is 3.93 GB
Users is 50.65 GB

 

[Rizvi1]

What two folders? You should have a minimum of four folders on the root of your drive larger than a gigabyte: Applications, Library, System, and Users

In my case,

Applications is 10.28 GB
Library is 14.47 GB
System is 3.93 GB
Users is 50.65 GB

Well this is my external I'm talking about, I had mentioned it within the post

 

[BlueRevolution]

Well this is my external I'm talking about, I had mentioned it within the post

D'oh! I should read more carefully.

Have you emptied the trash?

 

[Rizvi1]

D'oh! I should read more carefully.

Have you emptied the trash?

yeah, and tried the techniques on this page. Seems that all the missing space.. 50gb? is just missing

 

[yellow]

You should be using:

sudo du -h -d1 /Volumes/volumename

Where volumename is the name of the volume you're looking at.
If it's your boot volume you're looking at:

sudo du -h -d1 /

Prepare to be patient for it to finish.

 

[appledyl]

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.

agreed.