Newbie with MacBook Pro - disk space

[benmie]

Hi, got my Mac yesterday and it is great. A lot to learn with keyboard shortcuts and other small stuff.

I just had a look in the About This Mac and wanted to see how much disk space is left. It says :
Programs 19,4GB
Music/Sound 1,31GB
Photo 1,02GB
Other 892,1 MB
Movie 409,4 MB
Backup 53,9 MB

BUT - when I go to Music/Sound and Movie these folders are empty. When I go to Photo and show info it is only 50MB. And where and what is this Backup (don't think I ran some backup)

Hope someone can enlighten me

 

[fuchsdh]

To answer your question, the best way to figure out what is taking up space on your computer is a utility such as the free GrandPerspective http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net or something like CleanMyMac and DaisyDisk (I hear people recommend the latter all the time, but I've always preferred GrandPerspective's layout, speed, and lightweight application size.)

 

[GGJstudios]

Hi, got my Mac yesterday and it is great. A lot to learn with keyboard shortcuts and other small stuff.

I just had a look in the About This Mac and wanted to see how much disk space is left. It says :
Programs 19,4GB
Music/Sound 1,31GB
Photo 1,02GB
Other 892,1 MB
Movie 409,4 MB
Backup 53,9 MB

BUT - when I go to Music/Sound and Movie these folders are empty. When I go to Photo and show info it is only 50MB. And where and what is this Backup (don't think I ran some backup)

Hope someone can enlighten me

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space​

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 being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled by entering the following command in Terminal: sudo tmutil disablelocal.
  About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs​
• Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
• 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.
  
• 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:

• Encrypted drive
• Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
• App filling log file
• App or file was 89GB
• Drive needed to be re-indexed
• Time Machine backup file
• Large app cache file
• Garageband files and video podcasts
• Oversized email being duplicated
• Another email issue
• 18.45EB of movies shown
• Duplicate movies in iPhoto app

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

 

[IowaLynn]

Think you have to ask a mod.

But to answer your question, the best way to figure out what is taking up space on your computer is a utility such as .. or something like CleanMyMac and DaisyDisk (I hear people recommend the latter all the time, but I've always preferred GrandPerspective's layout, speed, and lightweight application size.)

Junkware CleanMyMac messes up systems and alters a system from performing properly, and causes systems to run slow.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6870605

You are concerned with what and where - for which I started with OmniDiskSweeper. Most likely you have file changes stored waiting for a TimeMachine backup. You can disable that feature which will show up in "Other."

(If there's a MobileBackups folder, those are Time Machine's Local Snapshots. Leave it alone; see Time Machine FAQ #30.)

What are Local Snapshots?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015

http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

New to Mac http://help.apple.com/osx-yosemite/whats-new/new-to-mac/#/darf5cbf2bc7

 

[GGJstudios]

or something like CleanMyMac

I would not recommend using CleanMyMac or any of its variants, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. Here's a recent example. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

​

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process. These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt. Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

​

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​

 

[fuchsdh]

I would not recommend using CleanMyMac or any of its variants, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. Here's a recent example. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

​

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process. These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt. Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

​

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​

I've had roughly a dozen people using CleanMyMac in my office and peer groups without issue for years now... All those horror stories sound like user error. While I can completely understand why you wouldn't want to bother with cleaner applications in general (I don't use CleanMyMac, because I am capable of deleting my own trash and knowing what to do for maintenance on my own), I'd say they can provide some users with a helpful and less obtuse way of dealing with maintenance compared to something like OnyX.

As for "Mac OS X takes care of itself", remember the ever-growing Safari top sites thumbnail vaults? There's plenty of times users should step in if they want an optimal OS X experience.

 

[GGJstudios]

I've had roughly a dozen people using CleanMyMac in my office and peer groups without issue for years now...

And there are plenty more than that who have had problems, some of them severe.

All those horror stories sound like user error.

That's the point. Some are certainly user error, because less informed users shouldn't be using such apps.

I'd say they can provide some users with a helpful and less obtuse way of dealing with maintenance compared to something like OnyX.

Not true at all. You don't hear all the stories of problems with OnyX, which has a good reputation. CMM has earned a bad reputation because a significant number of people have reported problems in using it. If you have one app such as OnyX with a solid reputation and another like CMM that is well known to cause problems, common sense would suggest avoiding CMM, even if some users didn't have problems with it.

As for "Mac OS X takes care of itself", remember the ever-growing Safari top sites thumbnail vaults? There's plenty of times users should step in if they want an optimal OS X experience.

That isn't a maintenance issue. That's a personal preference as to whether or not a user wants to keep that data. It's easy enough to disable it if a user is so inclined.

 

[benmie]

Thanks for all Replies - I am a little confused my all this info
Think it is a bit early for disk cleaners, as it was installed yesterday. I am just wondering where all the photos, sounds and movies are that I can see under About this Mac and HDD info, cause they are not in my folders

I have not enabled Timemachine yet.

 

[xylitol]

Those are generic categories of data that do not designate folders by the same name. You have hundreds of megabytes of wallpapers, sound libraries and in-app movie lessons, e.g. in

/Library/Desktop Pictures
/Library/Application Support/GarageBand
/Library/Application Support/Logic

 

[benmie]

Ah, so Photos does not mean the actual Photo folder
Great, learned something new.
Now I can go down through the thread at look at the suggested software.

Thanks to all of you.

 

[joe-h2o]

Ah, so Photos does not mean the actual Photo folder
Great, learned something new.
Now I can go down through the thread at look at the suggested software.

Thanks to all of you.

Correct, the "About This Mac" disc window tries to summarise what's on your disk in a big overview, so it groups all movies together and adds them up, even if they are in many different folders (of course, this assumes it knows what movies are - it misses some filetypes and just calls anything it can't categorise 'other').

For example, it will know that a .mov or .m4v file is a movie - it's Quicktime's native format, but it might not know that a .wmv file is a video (depending on what extensions you have installed).

In my experience, that overview window is just a rough guide to your disk's space - if you want to get a more effective view, there are several apps mentioned in this thread (but avoid CleanMy Mac - it's garbage ware).

While we're on the topic, avoid any apps that claim to speed up your Mac by making sure you have lots of "free ram" or "ram cleaner" apps - they directly work *against* OS X's memory management and do anything but speed up your Mac. Leave OSX to manage RAM on it's own, and generally leave it alone with regard to managing disk space.

 

[benmie]

Thanks for explaining and the warnings joe-h2o
For now I will do nothing, but in time I will find guides or "allowed" software to clean obsolete/temp files. Thanks again

Can I ask if there is an antivirus you can recommend? Tried Sophos, but it slowed down safari/surfing so I uninstalled it again.

Have a nice day.

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks for explaining and the warnings joe-h2o
For now I will do nothing, but in time I will find guides or "allowed" software to clean obsolete/temp files. Thanks again

Can I ask if there is an antivirus you can recommend? Tried Sophos, but it slowed down safari/surfing so I uninstalled it again.

Have a nice day.

No viruses exist for Mac.

There's no need for any. Apple automatically updates the xprotect definitions in the background.

PS - get an adblocker.

 

[GGJstudios]

Thanks for explaining and the warnings joe-h2o
For now I will do nothing, but in time I will find guides or "allowed" software to clean obsolete/temp files. Thanks again

Can I ask if there is an antivirus you can recommend? Tried Sophos, but it slowed down safari/surfing so I uninstalled it again.

I recommend avoiding Sophos, as it can actually increase a Mac's vulnerability, as described here and here.

Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released over 12 years ago. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which can be easily avoided by practicing safe computing (see below). 3rd party antivirus apps are not necessary to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as a user practices safe computing, as described in the following link.

​

Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.