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"Other" Storage

M

MXSkier62

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 4, 2006
151
3
I have a 256 GB MBA, and it has 108 GB of space available. It's divided into 16 GB Music, 85GB Videos, 1.5GB Photos, 5GB apps, and 35GB of other. What is "other"

What can possibly be that big? I did to migration assistant to move over from SL, could it have brought over all of this info? Is there a way to get that to be smaller? I'm not worried about filling up the other 110GB of space in the next 3 years of so, but I figure less "stuff" on the SSD, the faster it'll do everyday tasks.
 
MXSkier62 said:
I have a 256 GB MBA, and it has 108 GB of space available. It's divided into 16 GB Music, 85GB Videos, 1.5GB Photos, 5GB apps, and 35GB of other. What is "other"

What can possibly be that big? I did to migration assistant to move over from SL, could it have brought over all of this info? Is there a way to get that to be smaller? I'm not worried about filling up the other 110GB of space in the next 3 years of so, but I figure less "stuff" on the SSD, the faster it'll do everyday tasks.
Click to expand...

Other is everything besides the predefined categories.
 
I did a system scan with one of those apps that shows you the bulk of your drive. Turns out a lot of my "Other" was taken up by MKV files.
 
Get a copy of Daisy Disk. It's a useful utility for identifying what's occupying space in your Mac.

Rob
 
Did any of you have music and movie files when you first installed Lion? I'm on the 128 GB MBA and I want to make sure I have all the free space I can muster. Lion is reporting I have 656.8 MB of audio files but I haven't installed any files yet.

Any thoughts? :confused:
 
I know that "Other" includes my Aperture library on my computer.

"Photos" only lists 6.25 GB, which obviously can't be correct because my Aperture library is 93.7 GB. That accounts for my iPhoto library and other miscellaneous pictures I've got stuffed in folders.

"Other" mysteriously lists 153.05 GB. I don't have enough data on my computer to account for that much.

Strange that Lion can't correctly identify an Aperture library as being picture files.
 
palebluedot said:
Did any of you have music and movie files when you first installed Lion? I'm on the 128 GB MBA and I want to make sure I have all the free space I can muster. Lion is reporting I have 656.8 MB of audio files but I haven't installed any files yet.

Any thoughts? :confused:
Click to expand...

There are audio files associated with system apps. Do you have garage band or any applications that use audio files?
 
What I'm more concerned about is "Backups" which seems to fluctuate. It's now at 6.98GB. I think it's the local snapshots Time Machine keeps on your system, but why is it keeping them on my system when it's connected to my Time Capsule almost all the time. I thought this was for when you're not connected to the hard disk you back up to...:confused:

Edit: somehow it jumped to 10.65GB! This kinda sucks considering I have a 128GB MBA
 
Last edited:
mrapplegate said:
There are audio files associated with system apps. Do you have garage band or any applications that use audio files?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response :) I uninstalled Garage Band by clicking on it in the app launcher and clicking the X (it came preloaded with the system). That said, I assume that form of uninstall wouldn't install all the audio files associated with it? I guess I could hunt them down. Or should I leave that stuff alone?
 
palebluedot said:
Thanks for the response :) I uninstalled Garage Band by clicking on it in the app launcher and clicking the X (it came preloaded with the system). That said, I assume that form of uninstall wouldn't install all the audio files associated with it? I guess I could hunt them down. Or should I leave that stuff alone?
Click to expand...

If you use it then keep it around. Deleting the app should get rid of the files.
 
3bs said:
What I'm more concerned about is "Backups" which seems to fluctuate. It's now at 6.98GB. I think it's the local snapshots Time Machine keeps on your system, but why is it keeping them on my system when it's connected to my Time Capsule almost all the time. I thought this was for when you're not connected to the hard disk you back up to...:confused:

Edit: somehow it jumped to 10.65GB! This kinda sucks considering I have a 128GB MBA
Click to expand...

My computer was storing 75+ GB of backups due to the local snapshots from Time Machine. I just flipped the switch to off in System Preferences since I only update my Time Machine when I physically connect my external hard drive and that cleared it out.

It's not a feature I will ever take advantage of and I'd rather not have my hard drive slowly losing all it's free space. Just a guess, but I would think that eventually it would have eaten hundreds of gigs of space on my 1 TB drive.
 
Clark Kent said:
My computer was storing 75+ GB of backups due to the local snapshots from Time Machine. I just flipped the switch to off in System Preferences since I only update my Time Machine when I physically connect my external hard drive and that cleared it out.

It's not a feature I will ever take advantage of and I'd rather not have my hard drive slowly losing all it's free space. Just a guess, but I would think that eventually it would have eaten hundreds of gigs of space on my 1 TB drive.
Click to expand...

You can leave TM on and just disable local snapshots with sudo tmutil disablelocal if you're sure you won't need them. It takes a couple of minutes to delete the backups.
 
mrapplegate said:
You can leave TM on and just disable local snapshots with sudo tmutil disablelocal if you're sure you won't need them. It takes a couple of minutes to delete the backups.
Click to expand...

I'm not one that likes going messing around with sudo commands in terminal.

When I backup to Time Machine, I physically connect my USB hard drive to my MBP and click "Backup Now" to initiate the process. Leaving the switch to OFF in preferences doesn't really make any difference for me.

For someone with a Time Capsule or computer always connected to their Time Machine disk, your terminal command is probably useful.
 
Clark Kent said:
I'm not one that likes going messing around with sudo commands in terminal.

When I backup to Time Machine, I physically connect my USB hard drive to my MBP and click "Backup Now" to initiate the process. Leaving the switch to OFF in preferences doesn't really make any difference for me.

For someone with a Time Capsule or computer always connected to their Time Machine disk, your terminal command is probably useful.
Click to expand...

I've never used Terminal nor do I know how to. What could go wrong? Is there a site or something I could use to learn the basics?
 
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Clark Kent said:
mrapplegate said:
You can leave TM on and just disable local snapshots with sudo tmutil disablelocal if you're sure you won't need them. It takes a couple of minutes to delete the backups.
Click to expand...

I'm not one that likes going messing around with sudo commands in terminal.

When I backup to Time Machine, I physically connect my USB hard drive to my MBP and click "Backup Now" to initiate the process. Leaving the switch to OFF in preferences doesn't really make any difference for me.

For someone with a Time Capsule or computer always connected to their Time Machine disk, your terminal command is probably useful.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Your way of doing things is working for you.
 
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3bs said:
Clark Kent said:
I'm not one that likes going messing around with sudo commands in terminal.

When I backup to Time Machine, I physically connect my USB hard drive to my MBP and click "Backup Now" to initiate the process. Leaving the switch to OFF in preferences doesn't really make any difference for me.

For someone with a Time Capsule or computer always connected to their Time Machine disk, your terminal command is probably useful.
Click to expand...

I've never used Terminal nor do I know how to. What could go wrong? Is there a site or something I could use to learn the basics?
Click to expand...

The command line is useful. A basic Google search will show you simple commands.
Bottom line don't type in terminal commands without knowing what they do.
 
mrapplegate said:
If you use it then keep it around. Deleting the app should get rid of the files.
Click to expand...

Do you have any idea of where the music files are stored? I found like 85 MB worth in Library/App Support/Sounds/Garage Band Sounds or something but can't seem to find the rest that would make up the other 500+ MB of music.
 
palebluedot said:
Do you have any idea of where the music files are stored? I found like 85 MB worth in Library/App Support/Sounds/Garage Band Sounds or something but can't seem to find the rest that would make up the other 500+ MB of music.
Click to expand...

I'm not at my computer but that sounds right. You can use finder search for large files and see where they are to delete. I'm not sure where the excessive files are unfortunately.
 
palebluedot said:
Do you have any idea of where the music files are stored? I found like 85 MB worth in Library/App Support/Sounds/Garage Band Sounds or something but can't seem to find the rest that would make up the other 500+ MB of music.
Click to expand...

Delete this:

Library/Application Support/Garageband

It should be around 1.5 GB.
 
Clark Kent said:
Delete this:

Library/Application Support/Garageband

It should be around 1.5 GB.
Click to expand...

Thank you! I assumed since I never ran GB it would have no application files but you were right there was a 1.5 GB file there. I assume if I ever decide to install GB again off the app store it will just reinstall these files?

Thanks again all!
 
Using Daisy Disk is very handy, just ran it & it helped me account for 20GB of the 30GB in 'Other'.
It fluctuates massively though, last night it was 70GB but I'm putting that down to Time Machine.

Check the log files in the private section, ever increasing log files can take up a lot of space.
 
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