"Other" space - I've tried solutions found here

[kbutler84]

So my hard drive is almost full because of these other files. I understand that when time machine can't find the backup disk, it creates local backups and these are considered other files. I found the recommendation of entering "sudo tmutil disablelocal" in terminal and turning time machine backups off, but that did not do anything. Any help is appreciated.

 

[GGJstudios]

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML 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 be consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.
  
  OS X: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs​
  
  
• Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
  
  
• Check the System Memory tab in Activity Monitor to check page outs and swap used. If swap used is significant, restart your computer and track that value under your normal workload. If you have significant page outs under normal use, you could benefit from more RAM.
  
  
• 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

Freeing up space in Mac OS X

How OS X and iOS report storage capacity

 

[kbutler84]

I tried most of those options, and still nothing. Any other recommendations?

 

[adnbek]

Do you have exclusions set with spotlight (system prefs>spotlight>privacy). Any exclusions won't be indexed and therefore will appear as "Other".

 

[kbutler84]

Do you have exclusions set with spotlight (system prefs>spotlight>privacy). Any exclusions won't be indexed and therefore will appear as "Other".

Just my EyeTV app folder. Nothing more than a couple hundred Mbs worth.

 

[adnbek]

Scan for errors with disk utility, then reindex the drive. Spotflight effed up. Just by looking at "video", it says 18.45 EB (18,450TB) and it doesn't show at all either in the graph.

 

[kbutler84]

Scan for errors with disk utility, then reindex the drive. Spotflight effed up. Just by looking at "video", it says 18.45 EB (18,450TB) and it doesn't show at all either in the graph.

Problem solved, thanks!

Edit:
Well, sort of. The other files have been reduced, and I'm showing the correct amount of free space, however I'm still seeing 18.45EB of video in the window pictured above.

Edit 2:
Problem completely solved.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4129912?start=0&tstart=0

 

[adnbek]

Bug in ML as reported here and here.

I'd guess the bug should be fixed by now. Are you on 10.8.3?

 

[benwiggy]

So my hard drive is almost full because of these other files. I understand that when time machine can't find the backup disk, it creates local backups and these are considered other files.

No. Backups are shown in Pink. Other files are usually your files of some sort.

 

[kbutler84]

Thanks for the help everyone. Problem solved. See post above.

 

[GGJstudios]

I tried most of those options, and still nothing.

Apparently you didn't. Both solutions, using Disk Utility to repair your drive and using Spotlight to re-index, were listed in the first response in this thread.